D.he Oil price reached a new seven-year high at the start of the week: the American WTI variety cost a good 81 dollars per barrel – more than it has been since 2014. 84 dollars were asked for the North Sea variety Brent. Anyone who had hoped that the general upward trend in prices would weaken because the oil price rally could not go on forever is mistaken for the time being.
Inflation increased significantly in the past quarter, as the quarterly FAZ price report shows. Energy prices were an important driver, but the rise in inflation also reached more and more branches of the economy. The inflation rate in Germany was 3.8 percent in July, 3.9 percent in August and 4.1 percent in September: that was the highest monthly increase in consumer prices in 28 years. the Commerzbank has now raised its inflation forecast and now expects that in the course of the year there will even be a five before the decimal point.
Rubber more than 40 percent more expensive
Winter tires have also become more expensive. At least that’s what the Internet portal Check 24 reports, which compared the prices for the 100 most popular winter tires. On average, prices have risen by 6.6 percent compared to the previous year. That Federal Statistical Office reports meanwhile of an exceptionally high increase in import prices for the tire raw material rubber, which, according to official statistics, has not yet shown any corresponding effects on consumers. The import prices for natural rubber have risen by 41.7 percent over the year, while those for synthetic rubber have risen by 46.7 percent.
In a wide variety of industries, there have recently been spectacular records for price increases – in some cases, however, the unusually low previous year’s prices in the pandemic year 2020 were one reason why the year-on-year comparison was particularly drastic. For example, producer prices in Germany rose by 12 percent in August compared to the same month last year, which was the highest increase since December 1974. And there was a 12.6 percent jump in construction prices, the highest increase in more than one half a century.
The rates of increase in energy prices are still particularly high – but it is no longer possible to restrict the development to the energy sector alone. Energy rose 14.3 percent over the year. But services, for example, whose price increase was 1.6 percent in June, have now reached 2.5 percent. And core inflation in the euro zone, that is, inflation without the sharp fluctuations in food and energy prices that central bankers like to watch, rose from 0.9 percent in June to 1.9 percent in September.
Gasoline price at nine-year high
Specifically, you can see the price increase at the petrol stations: Super E10 there now costs an average of 1.64 euros per liter. This is not just the pre-crisis level. It’s the most expensive gasoline price in nine years. “Petrol was last more expensive in autumn 2012,” said an ADAC spokesman. The expensive tank autumn 2018, at that time a consequence of the low water on the Rhine, is long out of date.