Food is more expensive in Hungary. Solution? Victor Orban ordered sellers to lower the margins

Viktor Orban, like the first secretaries, took a pen and a card, and counted that the increase in food price can be stopped with an official order – a margin of sales representatives for 30 basic foodstuffs will be able to now amount to a maximum of 10 percent.

– Prices must be lowered so that the retail price is higher than the price of purchasing the goods by the seller by a maximum of 10 percent, and we will monitor it. We will introduce these funds in mid -March and keep them until the end of May. Then we will review them and we will continue it – says Hungarian Prime Minister Victor Orban.

Economists grab their heads – a movement from the time of centrally planned economy is a ready recipe for a deferred disaster during the catastrophe. Sooner or later it will end in an ankle increase in inflation.

Traders in vain explain that the margin is not profit, it is paid, among others, with salaries.

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– The margin for the product covers the operating costs of companies. It is from her that the companies pay their employees salaries, cover the bills for water, gas, electricity and other costs – indicates Tamás Kozák from the Hungarian Trade Association.

Orban has already frozen prices once – at the beginning of 2022, just before the election, he ordered to officially block prices, among others, sugar, flour, oil and meat.

A year later, Hungary had, at their own request, the highest inflation in Europe – in January 2023 it was over 25 percent.

– Even some goods began to be missing – notes Alicja Defratyka, an economist from Curioma.pl. – We have heard about how gasoline is missing, so this is how the regulations end, and I think that in this case it may also happen that some products will simply not pay for producers to produce if they cannot earn on it – says Alicja Defratyk.

Orban blamed the galloping of prices of Brussels, defending Ukraine, Western sanctions. Everyone but not yourself.

– Busings with Russia, sanctions for Russia, the Russian -Ukrainian war, because Hungary are one of the most economically related to that part of the world, so sanctions, war, war crisis and a huge increase in energy costs are also a pro -inflation factor that is still today – indicates Dr. Edyta Wojtyla, an economist from WSB,

Inflation in Hungary has dropped, but is still the highest in the entire European Union. The most painful for the average Hungary is a continuous increase in food prices.

– Inflation, as they say, never rest. Returns. In January it was five and a half percent, food inflation six percent. Food inflation will continue to grow: up to about seven percent – says Márton Nagy, the Minister of Economy of Hungary.

Last year, Hungary was hailed as the poorest country throughout the European Union, because the data from 2023 showed that the highest inflation in the whole Union went hand in hand with the lowest level of consumption – even lower even than Bulgaria and Romania.

– We buy less because we have less in wallets. If it goes on like this, I don't know what we will do – says one of the inhabitants of Hungary. – I see it after meat. A year ago, I paid a half thousand forints for the chicken breast. Now it costs two thousand – indicates another resident of Hungary.

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Viktor Orban manually controls the prices, because next year the election will take place in Hungary, and in the polls the opposition party of Tisza under the leadership of Peter Magyar.

Social moods must be improved immediately. The postponed bill will be paid by voters, and the political cost will fall on any successors.