Thursday, June 02, 2011

Food Prices

Food prices have risen sharply over the past 8 years. The trend in part reflects the de-dollarization of the earlier years followed by the dollarization of the past couple of years, as well as world prices and local competitive conditions. Regardless of the causes, this rise in prices by far exceeds the growth in income of much of the population.

Milk prices have experienced the narrowest swing in prices, from 250 drams in 2002 to 328 Drams in 2010. In contrast, the price of rice rose from 302 to 648 Drams over the same period. As reported in the table beow, similar trends are observed for flour, beef, sugar, and grapes. More is reported on the Resources/Economic Data page of www.aea.am (food_retail_prices.xls).



















Source: Armstat, combined releases