The items that rose the most in price included coffee, tea, cocoa powder and fish, along with oils and fats, according to new data from Statistics Sweden.
In April this year, the average price for groceries dropped for the first time since November 2021, ending a 16-month streak of price hikes.
“Between December 2021 and March 2023, prices on food and drink rose by an average of 1.5 percent a month,” price statistician Carl Mårtensson, from Statistics Sweden, wrote in a statement.
“In total, prices went up by 26.8 percent in 16 months.”
To put that into perspective, prices rose by just 1.8 percent between November 2019 and November 2021, he added.
Since April, prices have risen or dropped slightly from month to month, but in general they have remained stable.
“Essentially, the current food prices were set in the 16 straight months in a row where we saw price increases,” Mårtensson said.
Risen more than inflation
Compared with November 2021, the average price of goods and services has risen by 17.5 percent, according to Statistics Sweden's consumer price index (CPI), which is used to measure Swedish inflation.
Over the same period, food prices in all groups bar one have risen by more than that. The exception is “mineral water, fizzy drinks, fruit and vegetable juice”, which has risen by 15.8 percent.
“Coffee, tea and cocoa is the group which has seen the largest price increase since November 2021, by 34 percent. After that comes fish, with a price increase of 33.5 percent,” Mårtensson said.
In terms of individual products rather than groups of products, oranges and tomatoes have seen the largest increases in price, rising by almost 89 percent in the case of oranges and 80 percent for tomatoes.
At the other end of the scale, grapes have increased in price by just 4.1 percent, and frozen fruits and berries have gone up by 4.2 percent.
Here are the items with the largest and smallest price increases according to the new data:
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