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Everything in the shopping cart is becoming more expensive, say trade experts: "The conflict in Ukraine will increase the pressure to increase prices even more"
Photo: Fabian Sommer / dpa
According to retail experts, there is a risk of another price surge in the German retail trade due to Russia's war against Ukraine.
"The increase in energy prices and logistics costs caused by the Ukraine war will make itself felt in people's everyday lives - with every purchase in the supermarket or at the discounter," said the managing director of the Cologne Institute for Retail Research (IFH), Boris Hedde, the German press agency.
Prices would rise even more sharply than they have already done lately.
»That will be a challenge – especially for socially disadvantaged families.«
You can read an analysis of the economic consequences of the war for Germany here: Delivery problems, inflation, standstill - what consequences the war has for the economy
Trade expert Robert Kecskes from the market research company GfK also warned: "The conflict will further increase the pressure to raise prices." Because the global increase in energy prices triggered by the war not only made heating your own four walls and driving a car more expensive.
The production of many products from bread to detergent is also becoming more expensive.
The chief executive of the German trade association HDE, Stefan Genth, also warned that the war in Ukraine and the sanctions imposed as a result “could have a price-driving effect”.
The prices in the German food trade were already in motion before the escalation of the conflict in Ukraine.
According to the Federal Statistical Office for Food, consumers had to pay 5.3 percent more in February than twelve months previously.
However, the rise in prices in Germany is still comparatively moderate: the world market prices for food have recently risen much more sharply.
According to the United Nations, they have increased by 28 percent in the past year.
The price index, which reflects the world's most traded food, reached an average of 125.7 points, its highest level since 2011, as reported by the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) in January.
The reasons for this are crop losses, expensive fertilizers and an overall high demand.
ok/dpa
