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BRC reports shop prices up only 1.2 per cent
Archived article dated Wednesday May 7th 2008
The BRC-Nielsen Shop Price Index (SPI) for the UK reports annual shop price inflation of 1.2% in April.
During the last seven months the overall SPI has reported relatively steady inflation ranging from 1.0%-1.3%, with April proving no exception. Annual food inflation increased to 4.7% in April, up from 4.1% reported in March. Month-on-month food inflation has risen to 0.7%, an increase from March which showed no monthly price movement.The BRC's Director General, Stephen Robertson, said: “Non-food prices are down on a year ago and they're falling faster than at any time since September. This has mainly been driven by discounting of electricals, which are five per cent cheaper than a year ago. Food prices have gone up, but the retail price of food is rising much more slowly than the farmgate price of commodities such as wheat and milk. Retailers are succeeding at protecting customers from the full force of increasing commodity, energy and transport costs by absorbing most of those increases themselves, even when it's at the expense of their own margins. There is no doubt food prices would be much higher if it wasn't for retailers' efforts to contain them”
Mike Watkins, Senior Manager, Retailer Services, Nielsen added “The increased cost of living has a high profile at the moment so it is important to quantify that underlying shop price inflation across a wide range of items is still less than 5 per cent for food and actually in deflation for non-food. Whilst there is higher inflation in many dairy and cereal-based categories, shoppers continue to benefit from retailer competition and supply chain efficiencies which are keeping increases as low as possible for as long as possible.“
Tagged as: brc | shop price inflation
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