"When
assessing what to expect in the new year, Arūnas Vizickas, the manager and
founder of the price monitoring portal "Pricer.lt", does not see any
optimism. As he said while speaking on the "Business Position"
program of "Žiniai Radio", the economic situation will not improve in
the spring and a recession can even be expected. Resisting in the current
situation would be possible, but it requires more serious actions by the government.
As the
interviewer of the "Žinių radio" program said, probably in 2023 as
well. there will be no more definition in the market, and what started with the
latest sanctions against Russia is probably only expanding: we already have the
ninth package of sanctions.
"It seems
that the sanctions are ineffective against Russia, but very harmful for the EU
economies. In my opinion, they are ineffective because the EU is giving up
Russian energy resources, forcing Russia to find new markets, and Russia is finding
those alternatives. We are talking about China, India, even the countries
belonging to the Big Seven (G7) are making concessions for themselves so that
they can still buy Russian resources. There are even such situations when they
buy not only for their own needs, but also prepare to sell them", - said A.
Vizickas.
"Energy is
such an important and sought-after commodity that when a window closes in one
place, perhaps even several windows open in another."
Urges to take off
the "rose-colored glasses" and start acting: other countries are
already saying that the recession has arrived.
He believes that
food will become more expensive: even other countries buy less of our products,
the prices seem "defiant". "Regarding retail, we are picking up
on several signals. After the electricity price shocks, we can see that the
number of employees in retail chains has been decreasing since the summer. As a
rule, the number of employees increases when turnover increases: shelves need
to be loaded, new stores are opened. There is a reverse trend in this regard.
The fact that the number of self-service checkouts is increasing also works,
but there are still no robots to stack the goods on the shelves. But this is
not only the effect of self-service checkouts, - commented A. Vizickas. - If we
look at the turnover, it can be seen that, looking at the actual prices, the
turnover grew by about 19%, but compared to the comparative prices, in 2021 in
November, the turnover fell by 7 percent.
This means that
inflation, which is about 34 percent in food, partially compensates for the
expression of sales in terms of volume." As a result, according to A.
Vizick, the period is favorable for traders: they need less work, but due to
inflation, they earn more.
However, the head
of "Pricer.lt" warns, this fairy tale cannot continue indefinitely:
traders will face the fact that with an even more drastic decrease in
consumption, they will find themselves at the limit, when with such turnovers
they will not be able to earn and cover fixed costs. A study carried out in
December shows that the basket of the cheapest goods is still more expensive,
even when compared to November - a fixed price increase of 1.5-1.6 euros. At
that time, there is a bit of a price pullback between brands. "Whether
this is related to the fact that there were more promotions in December or
because the brands are expiring, we cannot say yet. Because the gap between the
cheapest goods and brands sometimes reaches 2-3 times. Under such circumstances
as now, this is already a great incentive to change consumption habits", -
the interviewer of the show shared his insights. Such changes are already being
observed, when consumers switch from shopping chains with a more expensive
image to cheaper ones.
It is very likely
that as prices rise, more and more people will cook at home, maybe the Polish
market will recover: it is already intense, but it can get even stronger. As A.
Vizickas pointed out, data from the Polish Statistics Department show that
Lithuania is the only neighbor from which people come to Poland to shop not
only from a distance of 35 km, but also from much further.
"We still
have a lot of upheavals ahead of us. One such could be China, which is
recovering from the wave of COVID-19, which may start buying a lot of raw
materials, which will cause them to become more expensive. The pain that is in
Ukraine will not be solved in any way. In Lithuania, we have not made any
fundamental structural changes with energy: neither the connections are
opening, nor the capacities", predicted A. Vizickas unhappily.
According to him,
in order to expect that everything will move for the better, there should be
some basis for it. "You have to make some effort and say why, one or
another measure will work. I haven't heard that yet, so it's hard for me to
believe that we and plus will stay, because we haven't done anything serious
yet, - said the interviewer of the show. - I would think that this situation
that has arisen in the market cannot be ignored. Because after that, there will
be some nighttime tax adjustments or some other new things and changes that we
will suddenly find out when we wake up in the morning. Back in the spring of
this year, in the absence of any crisis, other countries started introducing
inflation shields. Without basis are we saying that there will still be a plus,
although many countries are already saying that a recession has come," he
explained. He urged us to look at what the neighboring countries are doing -
this will allow us to see the real situation very clearly."
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