Expenditures of Albanian households to buy basic basket products, such as bread, oil, dairy and sugar, increased at double-digit rates in April from 14 to 24 percent, putting high pressure especially on the budgets of poor households. 

INSTAT reported that the growth rates of bread prices intensified further during April, while prices were 16.7% higher than last April. The highest increase was in the price of oil, which last month was 24.2 percent higher than in April. 

After oil the highest increase was for egg and dairy prices by about 17%. Prices for these products are rising, among other things, due to the problems that the livestock sector is going through, where there is a large decrease in the number of heads in recent years. Meanwhile, the flu that fell this spring in the largest poultry in the country in Durrës significantly reduced the supply of eggs in the market, affecting the price increase. 

INSTAT reported that food prices in April rose on average 10% more than the same month last year. But the World Bank in a recent assessment of the economic performance in the Balkan Region noted that official inflation in Albania reflects more the inflation of the rich while the inflation of the poor (20% of the population) living on low incomes pays a bill more expensive than official reports. 

Poor households in Albania spend almost 60 percent of their monthly food budget, so raising prices is more likely to worsen their survival. Albania has about 640 thousand people living in poverty, with less than 5.4USD per day, ranking our country with the highest level of poverty in the region, although with a decrease yesterday from 2020. 

In addition to food items the price of fuel in April rose by over 22 percent. This increase in addition to the negative effects on users widely affects all consumers by increasing the prices of products and services that use oil and gas as raw materials. 

Commodity prices, especially in the food basket, are expected to be high in the medium term due to the deformation of supply chains, first due to the Covid-19 pandemic and then to the war in Ukraine. 

Countries around the world are approving aid packages to amortize the shocks of the price wave to the needy, but the Albanian government due to low fiscal efficiency and high debt is unable to distribute the necessary funds to a wide range of the population. suffering from poverty. 

(Source: Monitor)