Published 6 May 2024 at 11.08
Economics. Food prices are increasing again and the promised price offensive from ICA is not yet visible in the numbers. On the contrary, those prices increase slightly in April.
Share the article
TwittraShare
– Individual stores have announced that they have reduced, but we do not see anything that has an impact on the whole, says Ulf Mazur, CEO and founder of Matpriskollen, in a press release.
According to recent figures from Matpriskollen, regular prices in the country's grocery stores increased by 0.2 percent for food-related products in April. In one year, these have thus increased by 2.1 percent.
– Each percentage point in price increases means approximately three billion kroner in more expensive daily goods, so these are quite large sums, even though in recent years we have unfortunately seen significantly higher increases than that. In total, this is a 23 percent increase in food-related products since January 2022, says Ulf Mazur.
Since March 2023, the rate of increase per month has slowed considerably, but now in April they are increasing again. For daily goods in total, the increase was slightly smaller, 0.1 percent.
Fruit and berries decrease the most in price, while dairy products increase the most.
Ica has lost market share to the low-price players and at the beginning of the year announced ICA Sweden that it is pushing to one billion kroner in reduced prices for the stores from March. But each individual store then sets its own prices and Matpriskollen does not note extensive reductions for consumers, but instead increases prices by 0.2 percent on food-related products in April.
– What we have seen is that individual stores have advertised that they lowered the prices of thousands of items, but we don't see anything that has a big impact on the whole, says Ulf Mazur.
The fact is that Willys is the chain that continues to resist the most and on average they lowered prices by 0 .1 percent in April.