Part of the problem is that Czech producers continued to export many of these commodities abroad, creating a shortage at home and keeping prices high.
The situation the country finds itself in reveals some of the downsides of free trade and globalization, in which companies and producers can often profit more by selling key products abroad rather than selling domestically.
The increase in the price of sugar by 100 percent, and butter, flour, and vegetable oils by more than 50 percent, is hard to compare in Europe. Inflation is mainly kept below a tolerable level by imported goods, such as fish, vegetables, fruit, and chocolate, where price growth is below the 10 percent mark compared to last year.
Oldřich Reinbergr, the former director of the largest sugar company in Czechia, Tereos TTD, explained the increase in the price of sugar. He said that sugar factories’ old contracts for energy have expired, and they now have to buy the energy to produce sugar at a higher price.
“Farmers are facing the same problem,” he said in an interview with the Seznam Zprávy news outlet.
According to Eurostat, Czechs paid less than 90 percent of the European average for food last year. Because this year’s inflation hit Czechia more strongly in terms of food prices, local prices reached 96 percent of the EU average.
The situation can be even worse for food produced in the Czech Republic.
Detailed foreign trade statistics from the Czech Statistical Office show that during the year, local producers took advantage of bottlenecks in the supply of certain foodstuffs, especially in the south of Europe, and began to export more.
For example, temporary shortages in neighboring countries allowed them to raise export prices for wheat and sunflower oil by 40 percent to 50 percent.
Logically, they demanded the same price from domestic customers. In other cases, for example in the case of sugar and eggs, they increased export quotas and thus limited what was offered on the Czech market.
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