Food prices surge dramatically in Sweden in January

A customer shops at a store in Stockholm, Sweden, on Feb. 6, 2023. Inflation continues to hover at lofty levels in Sweden with food prices registering the largest monthly increases in a year, according to a report released here on Monday. (Photo by Wei Xuechao/Xinhua)

STOCKHOLM, Feb. 6 (Xinhua) -- Inflation continues to hover at lofty levels in Sweden with food prices registering the largest monthly increases in a year, according to a report released here on Monday.

In a survey covering around 44,000 items, price comparison site Matpriskollen found that food prices increased by 1.3 percent in January, which is one of the largest monthly increases since inflation took off sharply in January 2022, Swedish Television (SVT) reported.

The prices of snacks and sweets increased by 3.1 percent month-on-month in January and by 14.8 percent year-on-year, followed by fish and seafood 2.4 percent (20.2 percent year-on-year), desserts 2.3 percent (17.2 percent), vegetables 1.9 percent (13.5 percent) and bread and cookies 1.9 percent (16.3 percent), SVT reported.

Although the price hikes for cheese and dairy products were not as steep in January as for some other categories, cheese became 25.4 percent more expensive year-on-year, while the price of dairy products increased by 23.6 percent.

Matpriskollen's survey also found that some items for which inflation was relatively modest in 2022 suddenly became considerably more expensive in January.

"For some items, the price hike was brutal in January," Ulf Mazur, founder and managing director of Matpriskollen, told SVT.

"This concerns, for example, sugar and beer. The remarkable thing is that it was not a long and slow increase but a shock increase (in January) for certain items," Mazur told SVT.

As an example, SVT listed a brand of sugar in a particular size of packaging that was 44 percent more expensive in January.

There are also examples where tomato juice and gluten-free pasta became 40 percent and 33 percent more expensive, respectively, SVT reported.

According to the latest data released by Statistics Sweden in January, 12-month inflation measured as Consumer Price Index (CPI) stood at 12.3 percent in December, which was the highest rate of inflation since February 1991.

People shop at a store in Stockholm, Sweden, on Feb. 6, 2023. Inflation continues to hover at lofty levels in Sweden with food prices registering the largest monthly increases in a year, according to a report released here on Monday. (Photo by Wei Xuechao/Xinhua)

People shop at a store in Stockholm, Sweden, on Feb. 6, 2023. Inflation continues to hover at lofty levels in Sweden with food prices registering the largest monthly increases in a year, according to a report released here on Monday. (Photo by Wei Xuechao/Xinhua)

People shop at a store in Stockholm, Sweden, on Feb. 6, 2023. Inflation continues to hover at lofty levels in Sweden with food prices registering the largest monthly increases in a year, according to a report released here on Monday. (Photo by Wei Xuechao/Xinhua)