{"id":32417,"date":"2023-05-03T12:29:19","date_gmt":"2023-05-03T12:29:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lynettelockhart.com\/client\/cucumbers-and-cheese-top\/"},"modified":"2023-05-03T12:31:46","modified_gmt":"2023-05-03T12:31:46","slug":"cucumbers-and-cheese-top","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/lynettelockhart.com\/client\/cucumbers-and-cheese-top\/","title":{"rendered":"Cucumbers and cheese top Britain’s inflation charts"},"content":{"rendered":"

By David Milliken<\/p>\n

LONDON (Reuters) – Cucumbers, olive oil and cheese topped Britain’s inflation chart in March, while traditional fish and chips saw the biggest price rise for diners, according to a new price comparison tool released by the country’s statistics office on Wednesday.<\/p>\n

The cost of a cucumber was up a cool 52% in the 12 months to March, at an average of 84 pence ($1.05) each, while olive oil cost 49% more. The price of ‘hard cheese’ – a category which includes Swiss cheeses emmental and gruyere – rose 44% and the more popular cheddar cost an extra 42% at 9.29 pounds a kilo.<\/p>\n

Sharp rises in food prices have continued to squeeze consumers in Britain and across much of Europe, even as the average rate of inflation across goods and services as a whole has started to decline.<\/p>\n

Britain’s headline consumer price inflation rate in the year to March was 10.1%, down from a peak of 11.1% in October, but food and non-alcoholic drink prices were up an annual 19.1%, the most since 1977.<\/p>\n

Higher energy prices since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 have raised agricultural production costs, and poor weather in Spain and Morocco – important sources of salad crops – have also pushed up the cost of fresh produce recently.<\/p>\n

Almost half of Britons surveyed by the Office for National Statistics last month said they had cut back on food purchases.<\/p>\n

For those Britons who can afford to eat out, the biggest percentage price rise was for a portion of takeaway fish and chips, which rose by 19% over the past year to an average of 9 pounds. Prices rose at the slowest pace at Indian and Chinese restaurants, where main courses to take away were up 10%. <\/p>\n

The new price comparison tool covers more than 450 of the goods and services used to calculate monthly inflation data.<\/p>\n

The biggest price fall was for kerosene used for domestic heating, which was 23% cheaper than a year earlier.<\/p>\n

The Bank of England forecasts that the annual rate of inflation will fall to 4% by the end of this year, due to lower energy prices and the fact that the sharpest price rises will increasingly have been more than a year ago.<\/p>\n

However, the BoE is widely expected to raise interest rates for a 12th meeting in a row next week.<\/p>\n

The British Retail Consortium, which represents major supermarkets, said on Tuesday that falls in food prices were also on the horizon. <\/p>\n

Prime Minister Rishi Sunak said at the start of 2023 that halving inflation was one of his main goals for the year.<\/p>\n

($1 = 0.7989 pounds)<\/p>\n

\n

(Reporting by David Milliken; Editing by Alexandra Hudson)<\/p>\n

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By David Milliken LONDON (Reuters) – Cucumbers, olive oil and cheese topped Britain’s inflation chart in March, while traditional fish and chips saw the biggest price rise for diners, according to a new price comparison tool released by the country’s statistics office on Wednesday. The cost of a cucumber was up a cool 52% in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":32418,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"spay_email":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1216],"tags":[1223],"class_list":["post-32417","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-u-s-economy","tag-updated"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"http:\/\/lynettelockhart.com\/client\/wp-content\/uploads\/Reuters_Direct_Media\/USOnlineReportEconomy\/tagreuters.com2023binary_LYNXMPEJ420FD-VIEWIMAGE.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/lynettelockhart.com\/client\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32417","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/lynettelockhart.com\/client\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/lynettelockhart.com\/client\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/lynettelockhart.com\/client\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/lynettelockhart.com\/client\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=32417"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/lynettelockhart.com\/client\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32417\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":32419,"href":"http:\/\/lynettelockhart.com\/client\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32417\/revisions\/32419"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/lynettelockhart.com\/client\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/32418"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/lynettelockhart.com\/client\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=32417"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/lynettelockhart.com\/client\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=32417"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/lynettelockhart.com\/client\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=32417"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}