Rome, January 15, 2022 – The ‘expensive-breakfast’. denounces it Assoutenti, which indicates a patchy rise in prices in Italy for the price lists of coffee, cappuccino and croissants in bars. The association reports that coffee prices have grown by 81% in 2021, those of milk by 60%, those of sugar and cocoa by 30%. Higher costs for exhibitors who, inevitably, are passed on to final consumers, and are giving rise to the phenomenon throughout Italy. Added to this are the announced increases in electricity and gas bills. Like this the coffee in some cases reaches 1.50 euros per cup with an increase of 37.6%.
And, moreover, it is this morning’s note Confesercenti, which warns: Omicron and rush of bills bring the hands of the recovery are six months back. The new slowdown triggered by the fourth wave and by the increase in the prices of energy goods could put at risk, in the first quarter of 2022 alone, about 6.4 billion euros of expenditure: a sting that would precipitate consumption again to the levels of the second quarter of the last year, effectively canceling all the recovery gained in the second half of 2021 and moving the recovery of pre-pandemic levels from the end of 2023 to the beginning of 2024.
Assoutenti also sounded the alarm yesterday, stating that the combined bills-inflation could have a total cost for the Italian economy of about 100 billion euros in 2022 in terms of lower household consumption. ” Families today find themselves in an extremely dangerous situation: on the one hand they are besieged by the increase in retail prices, with theinflation that in December it underwent a sharp rise of + 3.9% and price increases that have been continuing in recent weeks; on the other hand, they are impoverished by the maxi-increases in electricity and gas bills, which were triggered first in October, then in January ”, explains President Furio Truzzi. ” A real war that – according to the president – will leave a massacre on the field on the consumption front: the loss of citizens’ purchasing power caused by increasingly high bills and higher retail prices will further impoverish a substantial slice of population forcing it to cut spending in non-primary sectors to be able to make it to the end of the month, with immense damage to trade and the national economy ”.