Today came the statistics for how much the price of food and other goods has increased in the past year. The consumer price index (CPI) has risen by 4.8 per cent in the past year, from December 2022 to December last year. This is shown by figures from Statistics Norway. Food prices increased by 10 per cent During 2023, from January to December, the price of food increased by 10 per cent. This is the highest annual growth in over 40 years. – Food prices are one of the things that help to drive up price growth. So the figure of 4.8 per cent is a kind of weighted average of many prices, and what is moving upwards and has been doing so for a long time are food prices, says head of department Espen Kristiansen at SSB. All food groups increased in price, but especially fruit and vegetables, which rose by over 13 per cent. Milk, cheese and eggs were among the food groups with the lowest price growth, despite the fact that the prices for these goods collectively rose by 7.6 per cent. According to Kristiansen, it is also food products such as sugar, frozen fish and olive oil that have risen the most in price. Kristiansen says you have to go back to the 1980s to find a similar level of price growth in Norway, compared to last year. At that time, the price increase was also very high. – The two figures combined give a price increase of more than 11 per cent in two years. So it is not surprising if people notice it. Espen Kristiansen, head of department at Statistics Norway. Photo: William Jobling / news More aware in the shop Vibeke Gustad and Per Øyvind Bjørshol notice well that the prices of food are higher than before. They have become more aware of looking at the different prices of goods in the shop. – That is quite a strong increase then. The food budget is perhaps one of the biggest expenses many households have, so I think there are quite a few who have to start thinking about it a bit and look at alternatives, says Gustad. Vibeke Gustad and Per Øyvind Bjørshol say the prices mean they have to plan their food trade, throw away less and use up what they have. Photo: Eirik Haukenes / news – There are certain food products you can get used to, but you shouldn’t live stingy either, says Ann-Louise Nilsson, who does the food trade on Wednesday mornings in Kristiansund. She is from Sweden, but has lived in Norway for many years. Has it changed the way you shop? – Yes, it definitely has. One must think very sparingly and economically. I have tried to save, and I think there are many who have to now. Ann Louise Nilsson looks for date goods at the store in Kristiansund. She notices the price increase that has taken place on food over the past year. Photo: Eirik Haukenes / news Thinks the price increase will calm down Chain director of Coop Extra, Håvard Jensen, says that the signal they are getting from the market now is that food prices will fall in 2024. Håvard Jensen, chain director of Coop Extra, believes that food prices will fall in 2024. Photo: Espen Solli / news – We feel the signals in the market are like this, and we also see tendencies from the suppliers we have negotiated with, that prices are on the way down. So we hope and believe that both the Prime Minister and others will be right in what they have predicted: that the peak has been reached and that we will get lower prices going forward. Frode Steen is professor of economics at the Norwegian School of Economics. Despite the high price increase in the past year, he is also slightly optimistic about the year ahead. He says the good news is that prices outside Europe have now started to fall. – Then we hope that it will gradually come home to us. And I hope that during the year we are entering, we will see that things improve. Interest rate cut expected At the interest rate meeting in December, central bank governor Ida Wolden Bache raised the key interest rate to 4.5 per cent. Norges Bank then wrote in a press release that there would be a need to keep interest rates up for quite some time to come. And that it will not be seen down until autumn at the earliest. – The figure is marginally weaker than expected, and core inflation is 0.1 percentage point lower than what Norges Bank has assumed. The deviation is too small for this to affect the interest rate outlook. But this is going in the right direction. But it is not enough for us to start talking about early interest rate cuts, says chief economist Marius Hov at Handelsbanken. Marius Hov, chief economist at Handelsbanken. Photo: Mathias Moene Rød / news Central Bank has announced one interest rate cut during the year, but Hov believes we will get more interest rate cuts in 2024 than Norges Bank has signalled. – Handelsbanken expects three interest rate cuts in the second half of the year, with the first coming after the summer. Policy rate in percent The policy rate is set eight times a year by Norges Bank. The policy interest rate governs the interest rates in the banks, and affects your housing costs. The aim of raising the interest rate is for the high prices to come down again. The forecast tells us how Norges Bank thinks interest rates will develop in the future. Read more about sources and reservations here. A higher policy rate means increased expenses if you have a mortgage. Kjersti Haugland in DNB Markets, on the other hand, thinks we can expect two interest rate cuts during the coming year. – The figure is completely in line with what we had expected in advance. Core inflation, which Norges Bank is concerned with, fell 0.3 percentage points from November to December, to 5.5 per cent. It is marginally lower than Norges Bank envisioned. This strengthens our belief that the first interest rate cut can already come this autumn. – The downward trend is promising, but there is still a long way to go before the goal. We expect that inflation will continue to fall throughout the year, so that price growth will gradually become lower. Kjersti Haugland, chief economist at DNB Markets. Photo: Alf Simensen / news
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The consumer price index for 2023 from Statistics Norway shows that the price of food has risen by 8.9 per cent – news Møre og Romsdal – Local news, TV and radio
