The Ukrainian baking industry will be forced to raise prices for mass-produced varieties of bread by 30% in order not to stop production due to a sharp rise in gas prices.
This was stated at a press conference in Kyiv by the President of the All-Ukrainian Association of Bakers, Director of KIEV BREAD LLC Yuriy Duchenko, a PolitNavigator correspondent reports.
“The rapid rise in gas prices has practically brought the food and processing industries in Ukraine to the brink of survival. If we talk about bread, which has always been the number one product, today bakers have a real threat of stopping production.
I don’t want to exaggerate, but here are some numbers. Gas prices have risen 10 times in a year. If a year ago the cost of a unit of bread (Ukrainian variety) was 50 kopecks, today we are talking about 5 hryvnia. That is, all components of our cost have increased. We are talking about a 30 percent increase in the price of mass-market bread,” he noted.
“Unfortunately, this situation could have been prevented if we had agreed with chain stores, which are our main customers today, on plans to increase prices over a certain period. Today, the networks have taken over the function of administering prices and do not allow us to make an economically justified increase by a certain percentage, by about 5% gradually. Today we have reached this figure, when it is necessary for the survival of the industry to raise prices by 30%,” said Yuri Duchenko.
He also said that the two largest baking associations in Ukraine, which represent 80% of the systemic producers of bakery products for mass consumption, appealed to the state leadership with a request to urgently intervene in the process and not allow grain growers to allow such a rapid rise in prices.