Energy prices push Spanish inflation to 37-year high
MADRID (AFP) — Spanish inflation hit a 37-year high in March over soaring energy costs following Russia’s Ukraine invasion, official data showed Wednesday, amid a wave of social unrest over spiraling prices that has spawned protests, strikes and production stoppages.
The rate jumped from 7.6 percent in February to 9.8 percent in March, its highest level since May 1985, according to a preliminary estimate from national statistics institute INE.
“It is a bad figure which affects our economy, especially more vulnerable groups,” Socialist Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez told parliament.
Like the rest of Europe, Spain has been struggling since last year with soaring energy prices, with households and businesses struggling to pay electricity bills.
Since Russia invaded Ukraine on Feb. 24, food and oil prices have spiked, and Spain’s transport and farm sectors have staged noisy protests to demand help with crippling gasoline prices.
Self-employed truckers have since March 14 been on strike, and have blocked roads to protest rising fuel prices, causing sporadic shortages of perishable foodstuffs such as eggs and dairy products.
Sanchez said 73 percent of the price increases were due to the disruptions to the energy and agriculture markets caused by Russian President Vladimir Putin’s war in Ukraine.
“Putin’s ammunition does not reach us but the impact of the war does,” he added.
The statistics office said the hike in inflation in March in the eurozone’s fourth-largest economy was “due to generalized increases in most of its components.”
“These included increases in electricity prices, in fuels and oil prices, and in food and non-alcoholic beverages prices, which were higher this month than in March 2021,” it added in a statement.
Underlying inflation, which does not include energy or food products, was up 3.4 percent, its highest increase since September 2008.
German inflation hits 7.3 percent
FRANKFURT (AFP) — Inflation in Germany surged in March to a record high since reunification in 1990, official figures published Wednesday showed, as the war in Ukraine sent energy prices soaring.
Consumer prices rose by 7.3 percent annually, according to the federal statistics agency Destatis, up from 5.1 percent in February.
Russia’s invasion of its neighbor had sent prices for oil and gas soaring and had a “considerable impact on the high rate of inflation,” Destatis said in a statement.
The last time such a high rate was recorded was in the autumn of 1981 in West Germany, when oil prices increased “sharply” as a consequence of the Iran-Iraq war, the agency said.
Delivery bottlenecks, aggravated by disruptions to suppliers in Ukraine and Russia, also contributed to the inflation push.
Like many of its neighbors in Europe, Germany is highly reliant on supplies of Russian oil and gas to power its industry and heat its homes.
Germany has opposed calls for an EU embargo on Russian fossil fuels, but fears that deliveries could be curtailed have pushed the prices for the commodities to new highs.
The previous inflation peak for a reunited Germany came in early 1992, when prices rose year-on-year by 6.2 percent each month between March and May.
Broken down, the cost of household energy and motor fuels rose in March this year by 39.5 percent yearon-year, according to Destatis, while food prices increased 6.2 percent.