This is a first in seven months: inflation is slowing down. But the drop in prices is not for now. Consult the situation in your department on our interactive map.
Prices that continue to rise, and inflation that begins to slow. These are the two lessons of this new edition of the franceinfo shopping basket, in partnership with France Bleu and the NielsenIQ institute, which specializes in monitoring consumption. In detail, the total of our basket now reaches 109.66 euros, or 1.50 euro increase since April. Inflation, on the other hand, fell over one month, and stood at 16.8% over one year.
It was 17.6% between April 2022 and April 2023. This slowdown in inflation can be seen in all departments of France. But prices continue to rise everywhere. It is in Paris that the basket is the most expensive, with a total of more than 130 euros when the Vendeans are still the French who pay the least for their shopping. Our 37 everyday products cost €103.63 there.
The prices of the big brands continue to climb
With inflation at 16.8%, prices continue to rise sharply. This increase is simply a little slower than last month. This slowdown is particularly true for entry-level products (PPX) and distributor brands (MDD). “The adjustment is much more flexible on private labels”emphasizes Emmanuel Cannes, price and inflation expert at NielsenIQ, because negotiations take place throughout the year on these products, “and therefore distributors still have the ability to adapt prices a little more quickly to variations in raw materials”.
On the other hand, the products of major brands continue to increase overall, as a result of the latest repercussions on the shelves of agreements between manufacturers and distributors. These increases can be seen on the labels: +26 cents for a tube of branded toothpaste since April, +14 cents on the jar of Nutella. These increases are still linked to the agreements reached between manufacturers and distributors at the start of the year, which supermarkets have gradually applied since March.
The rise in sugar continues. It tops the top 5 of the most inflationary products in the basket, with 55.8% inflation over one year. “It affects all the products that will integrate sugar into the production cycleemphasizes Emmanuel Cannes. Breakfast powders, confectionery, syrups… All these products are up more than 20% compared to April.”
Drops of a few cents… and the hope of new negotiations
We might as well be clear: the return to pre-crisis prices, promised by the Minister Delegate for Trade Olivia Grégoire, “does not seem possible”says the NielsenIQ expert, who recalls that ten years of falling prices have been erased in 18 months. “Even if some raw materials have fallen, they have not returned to their previous level. And then there were wage increases which have an impact on production costs”argues Emmanuel Cannes.
However, we could well see price reductions on the shelves in the coming months which, if they do not offset the increases over one year, will be good for the wallet. We are already seeing very slight reductions on the labels, of the order of a few cents, in particular on first-price products or distributor brands. MDD shower gel has thus lost seven cents in one month. The six-litre pack of private label milk costs three cents less in May compared to April, and the 500 grams of private label rice is down a small penny.
If these are not yet enough declines to be felt, the movement could continue. Firstly on the first prices and private labels, on which the brands have more leeway, but also on the big brands. “The main criterion will really be the start of a new round of negotiations”, judges the NielsenIQ price expert. In any case, the government has been pushing for this for several weeks.
“The interest of industrialists is not necessarily to reopen negotiations”
Emmanuel Cannes, price and inflation expert at NielsenIQat franceinfo
“They assure that in 2022, they had not passed on all the increases and therefore that the margins had to be restored a little”, says Emmanuel Cannes. However, “if this round of negotiations opens and is conclusive, we’re really going to have quite a strong impact.”
Methodology
franceinfo and France Bleu have joined forces with NielsenIQ, a firm specializing in monitoring consumption, to establish this basket. Its composition meets two objectives: to be as close as possible to household consumption, with a basket of daily food and hygiene products, and to be as mixed as possible in its composition, by mixing national brand products, branded products distributors and first price products.
There is a strong representation in our basket of entry-level and private label products. A choice explained by the trends of recent weeks: the French have massively turned to these products to offset inflation and if they are still much cheaper than the others, it is also on them that the rise in prices is the most important.
Each of these products was then linked to one of the more than 500 product categories monitored by NielsenIQ, which provided us with the average inflation for the category over the month of February and the average price of the product in France over a period of four weeks, from April 24, 2023 to May 21, 2023.
The inflation of the basket was then obtained by calculating the average of the inflations. To obtain the price of the basket by department, we applied the price index of each department to the national amount.
You won’t find fresh fruits and vegetables there, because the database we had access to did not allow tracking of loose fruits and vegetables.