Representatives across all sectors of the retail industry are due to attend a meeting of the Retail Forum at the Department of Enterprise later today.
It is believed that price cuts to ease the burden of cash-strapped consumers will be one of the key issues of relevance to the retail sector to be discussed today.
Speaking with Checkout, Arnold Dillon, director of Retail Ireland, said, “The Irish retail sector has been significantly more successful than most other countries in Europe at insulating customers from the inflationary pressures of recent times.
“Irish food inflation over the last two years has been 17%, compared to an EU average of 27%.
“Ireland has [had] the lowest level of food inflation over the last two years, when compared to the EU-15 group of countries, whose economies are most similar to Ireland.”
‘Highly Competitive’
Dillon highlighted that the retail sector in Ireland is also highly competitive, as demonstrated by the negative retail inflation rates over the course of the decade preceding the recent period of high inflation.
“Irish retailers delayed passing on cost increases to consumers as we went into this crisis, which is manifesting itself in an inflationary lag,” he added.
“However, commodity prices are still around 40% higher than they were two years ago, and falls in energy costs and commodity prices will take time to work themselves through the supply chain, in many cases.”
© 2023 Checkout – your source for the latest Irish retail news. Article by Donna Ahern. For more retail news, click here. Click subscribe to sign up for the Checkout print edition.
