With a 1.9% increase in consumer prices in one year, many products have seen their cost go up. Who have experienced the greatest increase?
In its monthly report published on Wednesday September 15, 2021, INSEE highlights that in August 2021, the consumer price index (CPI) increased by 0.6% against 0.1% per month. July 2021. However, the increase is not uniform and some products are more affected than others.
Energy, food and manufactured goods saw the biggest price increases. Over one year, the increase for each of these expense items was 12.7%, 1.3% and 1.1%. On the services side, the increase is smaller, + 0.7%. Tobacco, for its part, experienced a 5.1% price increase over the same period.
Fresh produce prices up 6.8% in August
A major item of expenditure for French households, food saw a sharp increase in prices in August. Fresh products saw an increase of 6.8%. For fresh vegetables, the price increase is even greater 11.3% and for fresh fruit, the latter is 4.2%. The cold spring and rainy summer resulted in weaker than usual harvests which pushed up prices.
Among the manufactured products, it is the articles of clothing and furnishings which sign the strong increases of the prices, respectively + 4%. Conversely, the prices of mobile phones fell by 2.4%.
Energy is also concerned, in detail, the prices of natural gas increased in August 2021 by 31.2%, those of petroleum products by 16.9% and electricity by 2.2%. Faced with rising bills, the government announced that additional aid of 100 euros would be granted to nearly six million low-income households benefiting from the energy check.