British retailers warn of pre-Christmas price rises
October 27, 2021, 4:54 am

British retailers warn of pre-Christmas price rises

UK-Christmas decoration-Christmas season/Pixabay

The US News reported citing Reuters, British retailers warned on Wednesday of pre-Christmas price rises after they reported the smallest year-on-year decline in the average selling price of goods in their stores since before the start of the coronavirus pandemic.

The British Retail Consortium trade body said shop prices rose by 0.4% on the month in October and were 0.4% lower than a year before, the smallest year-on-year fall since January 2020.

Price rises were led by higher costs for food, which was 0.5% more expensive than a year earlier.

BRC chief executive Helen Dickinson said: "It is now clear that the increased costs from labour shortages, supply chain issues and rising commodity prices have started filtering through to the consumer."

She added, three in five retailers planned to raise prices before Christmas.

The BRC's shop price index covers a narrower range of spending than the consumer price index targeted by the Bank of England, which touched its highest since 2012 in August at 3.2%.

BoE Chief Economist Huw Pill predicted last week that inflation could soon reach 5% - more than twice the BoE's target - and financial markets expect the central bank to raise interest rates for the first time since the start of the pandemic next week.

The BRC data is produced with market research company NielsenIQ, which said rising prices could lead to a shift away from discretionary spending.

Source: usnews

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BENEFIT, the Kingdom’s innovator and leading company in Fintech and electronic financial transactions service, has sponsored the BuildHer CityHack 2025 Hackathon, a two-day event spearheaded by the College of Engineering and Technology at the Royal University for Women (RUW).
Aimed at secondary school students, the event brought together a distinguished group of academic professionals and technology experts to mentor and inspire young participants.
More than 100 high school students from across the Kingdom of Bahrain took part in the hackathon, which featured an intensive programme of training workshops and hands-on sessions. These activities were tailored to enhance participants’ critical thinking, collaborative problem-solving, and team-building capabilities, while also encouraging the development of practical and sustainable solutions to contemporary challenges using modern technological tools.
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Professor Riyadh Yousif Hamzah, President of the Royal University for Women, commented: “This initiative reflects our commitment to advancing women in STEM fields. We're cultivating a generation of creative, solution-driven female leaders who will drive national development. Our partnership with BENEFIT exemplifies the powerful synergy between academia and private sector in supporting educational innovation.”
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