With butter, shops and dairies are taking advantage of the situation. It happens every year, said Výborný – Novinky

Vóbrný identified grocers and merchants as the reason for selling butter for more than 70 crowns. “Unfortunately, it happens almost every year that food vendors and traders take advantage of the pre-Christmas situation and significantly increase their additional costs, “said the minister.

He said that the purchase price of milk has only increased by a few ten shillings per liter in the past months, and the price of butter has grown to a high level.

Havlíček said that the main reason is not food producers, but energy prices. “We have the highest energy prices in the EU in the last three years, the fourth highest in the last three months. “Compared to 2021, electricity will be 90 percent more expensive, and suddenly gas will be more than 100 percent more expensive,” he said.

According to Havlíček, the government is to blame for the increase in energy prices, which, according to him, has made food and fertilizers more expensive.

“Do you really think there is fertilizer used in the milk?” Výborný objected.

Among the reasons, Havlíček listed a higher VAT than, for example, in Germany, an increase in corporate income tax and the fact, according to him, that the government was restricting medium-sized farmers, when the those with more than 150 hectares are much smaller. the farmers working on smaller plots.

“Even your chairman has it in his hands, he just has to give instructions so that Olma butter does not cost 74 kroner,” said Výborný, who mentioned that the Agrofert group has several dairy enterprises.

“It is not normal for butter to cost so much in a situation where the purchase price of milk, which rises in the order of ten cents, is now about 12 crowns per litre,” said the minister .

He responded that energy prices are behind expensive butter by saying that energy makes up about ten percent of the price of milk, and that is not the main reason.

He said that as a minister, he does not have the tools to influence food prices. “We have tools to check food safety and quality,” he said.

“When the prices are down, it’s your fault, when they’re up, you don’t set the prices,” Havlíček responded to his words.

According to Výborný, the method could be monitoring the market and economic competition. He pointed out that the government on Wednesday approved more powers to the Office for the Protection of Economic Competition.

According to Trinity Bank Chief Economist Lukáš Kovanda, the price of butter in the Czech Republic is the highest in the entire EU, twelve times faster than, for example, in Hungary. And it’s not low-fat milk.

“In September, according to Eurostat, its price grew by 42.5 percent year on year, which was higher than in any other EU country. The average for the entire EU was only 13.7 percent of the year-on-year price increase,” said the economist.

In September, butter prices grew the second fastest in Slovakia, with 35.2 percent, and in Germany, the increase was 29.3 percent.

“However, in all other EU countries, butter prices have already grown at less than half the level of the Czech Republic, or even decreased or fallen. In Romania, for example, the price of butter fell by 10.5 percent. In Hungary, prices grew by 3.6 percent, ie about twelve times slower,” he said.

According to Kovanda, Greece is an example of a country where butter prices have fallen, which, together with the Czech Republic, has the lowest fat content of milk in the EU for a long time.

“So even if the fat content of Czech milk is weak, it clearly cannot explain such a large increase in the price of domestic butter. If he could explain it, he would have to grow in Greece too, and very much so. Because in Greece this summer, the temperature was the highest ever in history, and higher temperatures have a negative effect on the fat content of milk. But in Greece, the average price of butter in September was exactly the same as in September 2023,” said Kovanda.

He pointed to Kovanda as the reason for the price increase. “The two largest groups, both German, control more than half of the Czech market, they raise prices more than necessary and respond to the real market conditions,” said the economist .