Currently our newspapers are shouting at the top of their voice about the steady rise in food prices in Britain. According to recent reports of the Daily Telegraph annual rate of inflation in our food prices is over 12%. Certainly it is making life of any ordinary Briton increasingly hard, because annual food spending for average British family has increased in three times! Only in October food prices rose 7%. It is the highest monthly rise in British food prices since 1992.
But I doubt that all this is only the result of a worldwide increase in food prices, caused by climate change (global warming), increase in global population, increase in production of biofuels and rising standard of living in most developing countries (such as China and India), as our press tries to present us.
The matter is that our food prices are growing faster than world prices, even faster than in neighboring EU economies or such emerging market economies like Bulgaria or Russia. See for yourself! In the same conditions annual rate of inflation in food prices in the USA is 4%, in euro zone - 2,5%, in Russia - 7%. It means that after G. Brown’s coming to power this country (12% !) has become a world leader in national food price level and in food prices’ growth rate! I’m sure Brown’s government is simply unable to get over food crisis on one jack. Current high rate of food-price inflation in the UK is a result of our present authorities’ denial to develop our economy in united euro zone that surely may be helped us to overcome rise in food prices as soon as possible.
For now thanks to such bungling policy of Brown’s Cabinet our people have to pay for their staple foods (due to data of the UN’s World Food Organization) three times as much as people of Bulgaria or Macedonia! And it is only the beginning of the world food crisis…