The top 10 strongest price increases in 2023 clearly show that inflation is still taking its toll. Although core inflation in Belgium made life only 1.35% more expensive over the course of the year, numerous products and services have far outstripped this general rate of inflation and have become more than 10% more costly.
Some of the biggest price increases can be seen in basic commodities, with olive oil especially impacted by poor harvests. Heat, forest fires and drought are ravaging olive groves in Spain, Italy and Greece. The result has been an astonishing rise in the price of olive oil. The same bottle now costs an average of 31% more than in December 2022.
Shoppers will also have noticed the increased cost of basic products: sugar, tea and potatoes. On the world market, sugar prices reached their highest level in ten years during the course of this year due to a combination of failed harvests and increased demand.
Meanwhile potatoes were effected by heavy rainfall which made harvesting difficult. Tea has become increasingly expensive owing to the increased costs for transport, packaging and pesticides, while demand is also increasing.
Although there has been a significant price increase for concentrated milk and powdered milk (+14%), this has had a limited impact in Belgium where these are marginal products. Regular milk rose around 2.5%. Bread on the other hand is a highly popular product, and became 6% more expensive on average.
Beyond the supermarket
But price hikes do not only concern things that end up in the shopping trolley: spending the night away from home is much more expensive than a year ago; with an increase of 21%, holiday centres even took second place in the top 10.
Hotels also became considerably more expensive: 14% more for a room. This was down to both increased labour costs (staff costs rose more than 10%) and greater demand after the pandemic as people like to travel again and have the money for it due to wage increases.
Like every year, the stamp also ends up high in the rankings of price increases: Bpost imposes a yearly increase in price by a multiple of inflation as income is declining due to the shrinking postal market. Price increases should dampen that effect.
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A large number of labour-intensive services fall just outside the top 10, but still rose in price by more than 10%: childcare (+13%), veterinarians (+11%), fast food (+11%), electricians (+10%) and home insurance (+10%).
However, some services and products also became considerably cheaper: new contracts for natural gas more than halved in price, and electricity cost more than a third less than they did last year.
The rest of the top 10 consists mainly of electronics such as computers and smartphones. Surprisingly, petrol also became cheaper last year, despite reports of rising oil prices. But in the meantime, a barrel of Brent oil is now cheaper than a year ago.
