No more shocks at supermarket as prices go up just 0.9pc in a year
Checkout bill stabilises at last, with 0.9pc rise - compared with 4.3pc increase in inflation
Price increases in supermarkets stabilised last year after a two-year climb, a Consumer Council survey has revealed.
The prices of the 200 top-selling items in three chains - CR Vanguard, Wellcome and ParknShop - rose just 0.9 per cent on average last year, the council's annual supermarket survey found. They went up 5.11 per cent in 2011 and 6.8 per cent in 2012.
"The smaller increase can be attributed to competition among the supermarkets, their pricing strategies and shoppers' changing buying power and tastes," council head Gilly Wong Fung-han said yesterday.
In the consumer watchdog's survey, the items were split into 12 main categories. The average price increased in two-thirds of the categories, with the biggest increase in the prepackaged bread or cake category at 6.8 per cent. The price of a Sara Lee pound cake rose 13.7 per cent.
The price of dairy products or eggs saw the second largest increase at 4.6 per cent. The price of infant formula, which surged 17.3 per cent in 2012, went up by just 4 per cent.
"We are not sure if the stabilisation of infant formula prices has to do with the [two-tin] milk powder quota," Wong said. "What we know is that formula prices had already gone up a lot over the past few years."