No bread will be broken

Early summer certain rules changed in the Hungarian Food Book, for instance the proportion of more expensive ingredients increases in breads. The big question is, will breads cost more for consumers? The Hungarian Baker Association says bread prices won’t increase. Why not? Earlier when energy prices elevated, shoppers had to pay a higher price for bread than before. Bakers are good at representing their interests. For instance in early 2017 when the VAT on certain food products decreased, cutting bread’s VAT was also mentioned.

However, this piece of information only makes what is happening now more puzzling, as legislators say lower VAT should entail lower consumer prices. All in all, in the case of bread it might also happen – we have already seen it in other product categories – that a lower VAT rate won’t bring as much lower bread prices, or perhaps no price decrease at all. Whatever happens in the production process, ingredients can become cheaper or more expensive, bread’s price will remain more or less the same. //