Hungary’s National Bank Governor Gyorgy Matolski said on Monday that inflation next year will average 15-18%, with food accounting for more than 50% of the increase.
“The Hungarian food industry operates with unacceptably low productivity and monopoly, with a high share of imports and high energy inputs,” he said.
In Lithuania, one of the Baltic states whose small, open economies are more exposed to volatility in international commodity markets, central bank governor Gediminas Simkus sounded a more optimistic note.
“Next time, we will see that monthly inflation will come down a bit, because peaks in energy raw material and food prices have already happened and hopefully they will not happen again,” he said last week.
a poor christmas
Rising prices have started driving down consumption.
Food sales in Hungary fell by 5.6% in October as households faced year-on-year savings of more than 34% for meat and fish and 80% for bread. Meanwhile Czech buyers are grappling with a 105% increase in sugar prices while in Poland the price of flour is 45.4% higher.
At a market in Budapest, Eva Rez, 75, said she could not afford the traditional festive meal of carp this year.
“It will be a poor Christmas, because our pension is low and we need to pay for utilities and our medicine,” she said, adding that she and her husband’s pension totaled 200,000 marks ($507.74) a month. live on.
“We’ll have some broth, stuffed cabbage and roast beef and potatoes at Christmas,” Rez said. “I feel desperate that this is going to continue, and for how long?”
A survey by Barometer Providenta showed Poles will spend an average of 1,259 zlotys ($281) on Christmas this year, 307 zlotys more than a year ago, although almost half of those surveyed said they wanted to keep costs down. Will buy cheap products.
HUCPIY inflation in Hungary is expected to begin a very slow decline in the first half of next year.
Goldman Sachs has said, “There are still no durable signs that inflation dynamics in Hungary are improving.”
