Good news: Drastic price decrease expected in dairy products in Hungary
After months of price increases, something shifted: dairy prices could soon fall significantly in Hungary. The decrease could be as much as 20 percent. We will have to pay less for milk, butter and cheese in particular.
Falling prices of dairy products expected
According to the Milk Product Council (Tej Terméktanács), the price of butter, cream and cheese in the European Union has been falling for months. This makes it inevitable that the price drop will be felt in Hungary as well, Blikk.hu writes. According to RTL Híradó, the average milk buying-up price of HUF 222.42 (EUR 0.58) in December could soon be HUF 180 (EUR 0.47). That means a 20 percent decrease. Domestic producers will not be able to ignore this, and will be forced to follow Western trends, the Hungarian news channel reports.
The price of cow milk is now 70-80 percent higher than a year ago. At the same time, the cost of keeping cows has increased considerably. “This point corresponds to about a zero balance. If the price falls and our costs do not fall, dairy farmers will suffer significant losses,” József Rejtő, Managing Director of the Milk Product Council, told RTL Híradó. And, according to Rejtő, their costs will not decrease but increase considerably.
In the EU, it already started
Although the price drop itself has not yet reached Hungarian dairy farmers, the news of it has. The forecast is that the price of raw milk will soon be HUF 184 a kilo, down from HUF 222.42 a kilo in December. Prices of butter, cream and cheese in the EU have been falling for months, according to the data of the Milk Product Council.
According to agricultural economist György Raskó, this price drop will also spread to Hungary. He believes that the price decrease will definitely occur in the coming months, regardless of the existence or the removal of the price cap on foodstuffs. In Hungarian shops, it is not uncommon to see a price of HUF 6,000 per kilo for butter. However, ALDI recently announced a permanent price cut of about 20 percent on some types of butter. They have not ruled out that they will cut the prices of other dairy products in the near future.
Source: rtl.hu, blikk.hu