Inflation was unavoidable in 2025. The fight against retail food inflation was waged all year, round tables were held, and traders were summoned to account...
As a result, 38% of respondents indicated that the "low-cost basket" helped reduce shopping expenses, while 28% admitted that their expenses remained unchanged.
Prices last month, compared to last year, increased by 3.8% for consumers, and for food and non-alcoholic beverages, the increase was even 5.2%.
Coffee broke all records for price increases – rising by 34.1%, which has even moved modest packages into the category of exclusive goods similar to caviar, now packaged in special mesh wrappers with a "security" tag. This is in addition to the gates that customers must pass through at the exit of the sales floor, scanning the barcode of their receipt. High technology. High relationships! In other words: supermarket visitors are inherently suspected of stealing food.
Liva Zorgenfreya, the chief economist of a Swedish bank in Latvia, is pleased that "at least prices for fruits and cheese are decreasing, and the price of sugar is even 30% lower than a year ago." However, her colleague from the Bank of Latvia, Ieva Opmane, points out how the increase in electricity tariffs is reflected in the consumer basket. By winter, the share of renewable sources – wind and solar – decreases, and in the cold, even almost criminal gas becomes in demand (of course, it is now exclusively from allied states), and therefore the meter, although deregulated, still runs up. Moreover, the energy component is also included in the production of food.
The bankers' and experts' forecast for 2026 – a price increase of "only" 3% – seems overly optimistic. Let’s not forget that Latvia's economy is still too small and open not only to global storms but even to regional drafts.
And when an unexpected opportunity arises to earn, for example, from the transit of Belarusian mineral fertilizers, for which sanctions were lifted in December by Donald Trump himself, a haughty facade is put on, as if to say, "we are not like that." Although, perhaps, this would be the only opportunity to support the barely surviving railway transport.
