In December consumer prices increased compared with the same month of 2023 year by 4.1 percent, as released from preliminary data from the Department of Statistics.Compared with November in December consumer prices didn’t change. Since as in November inflation in annualized was 3.5 percent, the consumer price increase
accelerated in December. Inflation was higher at the beginning of the year, when the tax on turnover was increasing, while for the rest of the
year prices increased at an average of 0.2 percent per month. In 2024 year prices were 3.7 percent higher than the average year ear earlier. “This means that with the same purchase basket it would need to earn 3.7 euros more for every 100 euros euros. The average wage increase was higher than 3.7 percent, so for the majority of wage recipients
life was a little better last year.” – explained the chief economist of Luminor bank Lenno Uuskula. Although the annual price increase is 4.1 percent lower than in the three previous years (12.0% in 2021 year,
17.5% at the end of 2022 year and 4.3% by the end of 2023 year ), it is a very large
increase in prices. The growth of prices in the Eurozone is lower, and the growth of prices in our neighboring countries Latvia, Lithuania and Finland, is clearly lower than ours. “After the significant increase in prices in 2021 and 2022 Estonia would need a very significant increase in prices or even a slight decrease in prices. so that exporting businesses will receive
slight relief and be able to adapt to increasing costs. But the continued increase in prices will complicate the life of exporters even in the case of recovery of external demand, as new orders could go outside Estonia, ” -notes Uuskula. But in this
year, unfortunately, we should expect some acceleration of the prices, because
taxes and excess taxes and excess taxes, and also increases in different payments and fines. Businesses will try to compensate these to their employees, but this means increased costs and increased prices, the economist adds. Weekly 16 16 700 people in Estonia need food assistance Statistics show, that in 2024 year the Food Bank provided weekly food assistance to an average of 16 16 700 people in Estonia, a
significantpartofwhicharechildren(41%).Althoughinthelastyearthere wereabout274800peoplelivinginthepoverty(by29000fewerthantheyearearearlier),theirnetincomeperfamilyremainsbelow807eurospermonth,whichputstheminanextremelydifficultposition.