The basic shopping basket of a family is already 315 euros more expensive per year

The austerity when making the purchase does not prevent having to pay an increasingly higher price.

Thomas Osborne
Thomas Osborne
11 December 2022 Sunday 22:43
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The basic shopping basket of a family is already 315 euros more expensive per year

The austerity when making the purchase does not prevent having to pay an increasingly higher price. The unprecedented rise in food prices has brought back the crisis habits of the 70s and 80s, consumption analyzes agree.

Households control spending more, compare prices more between products and brands, and change establishments more frequently. They are eaten less fresh and frozen ones abound. But even so, it is impossible not to pay more to fill the fridge.

With the current price increase, a family of four members has to spend 315 euros more per year for a shopping basket without luxuries, with twelve basic foods. To prepare this basket, we have taken as a reference the average annual expenditure per capita of some of the products most consumed by Spaniards in 2021, which includes the Report on food consumption in Spain, prepared by the Ministry of Agriculture and Food.

These are: olive oil, pasta, eggs, milk, chicken meat, fresh fruit, bread, coffee, rice, vegetables, fish and potatoes. To this expense for four people, we have applied the CPI average for the first ten months of the year – this week the November index will be published – for each of the selected foods.

With this calculation, a household of four members spent 2,525.36 euros a year to fill the shopping basket with these dozen basic products. A year later, taking into account the inflation data, he would have to disburse 2,850.70 euros. In total, 315.34 euros more.

The food that registers the highest inflation is olive oil, with an average CPI for the first ten months of 25.97%. This means that, if in 2021, a typical household spent 45.96 euros on oil per year, now it has to pay more than 57 euros. Olive oil started this year with very high inflation, from 30.1% year-on-year in January, reaching a peak of 42.5% in April, just after the outbreak of the war in Ukraine. As of that month, the CPI for olive oil moderated, although in the last two months it has rebounded again.

Pasta stands out as the second food in this basic shopping basket with a higher average inflation of 25.84%. Stocking up on noodles or macaroni for four people a year ago cost 34.83 euros; twelve months later the ticket for this product rises nine euros per year.

In fact, these different foods have become the item that registers a higher level of inflation, underlines Caixabank Research. Thus, 19% of the food products in the CPI basket registered inflation of more than 20% in October, a figure that increases to 75% if one observes the proportion of food products with inflation of more than 10%.

When will the price rise moderate? It will still take some time to show substantial relief, economists and the food industry agree. Record prices won't go away so easily.