NATALIA SHAGAIDA: “LOWER GRAIN PRICES HAVE LITTLE OR NO EFFECT ON THE COST OF FINAL BREADSTUFFS"
Natalia Shagaida, Head of Agrarian Department of the Gaidar Institute, shared her opinion with “Nezavisimaya gazeta” on price rises for breadstuffs. The expert believes that the impact of grain price on final retail breadstuffs costs is extremely limited.
According to the newspaper, regions fear a further rise in prices for bread and bakery products. These fears are expressed by many subjects of the Russian Federation. Nevertheless, officials from the Ministry of Agriculture assure that bread prices will go down in the very near future due to a decrease in domestic grain prices. Natalia Shagaida noted that very little grain "is included" in the cost of bread, and the reduction of its prices has almost no effect on the cost of the final bakery products.
"There is a very small share of grain in the price of bread. The cost of grain has to change by 50% for the price of bread to have a reason to change by 7%. Therefore, the reasons for the rise in price should be sought in the cost of other price components, i.e. imported components, prices for electricity, gas, fuel for cars," said Natalia Shagaida.
"There is a very small share of grain in the price of bread. The cost of grain has to change by 50% for the price of bread to have a reason to change by 7%. Therefore, the reasons for the rise in price should be sought in the cost of other price components, i.e. imported components, prices for electricity, gas, fuel for cars," said Natalia Shagaida.