Global food costs fell to the lowest level in two years in May, reviving hopes that sticky inflation on supermarket shelves will start to ease, reports Bloomberg.
“While the UN food index has fallen for 13 of the past 14 months, that’s had little impact on consumers, reflecting how prices of everyday items are at the mercy of broader economic drivers.”
The article quotes Joseph Glauber, a senior research fellow at IFPRI, who said that high consumer food prices are also, in some cases, very local and specific to individual countries. “It’s really the macro-economy that is driving the food prices,” Glauber said. “We see a number of macroeconomic factors including exchange rates, including energy prices, including wage price inflation and that sort of thing. That affects food prices at the end of the day.”
The origianal article has been republished by several media and is available in open access via Yahoo, The Economic Times (India), India Times, Windsor Star (Canada), Al Wababa (UAE).