Rolling coverage of the latest economic and financial news
- UK growth to stall in Q2 and Q3, and shrink in Q4
- UK economy ‘will grind to a halt’, BCC forecasts
- Price of UK petrol makes biggest daily jump in 17 years
- Fuel cost surge and dire economic forecast shatter PM’s hope of reset
- Coming up: European Central Bank meeting
The owner of discount group Poundland has reported that consumers in the UK are cutting back on essential purchases, due to the cost of living crisis.
Pepco, which also runs the PEPCO and Dealz brands in Europe, reported that its UK customers were scaling back their spending as rising inflation hits budgets.
Specifically in the UK, the cost-of-living crisis has impacted customers’ disposable income as they scale back even on essential purchases in the short term.
Our continued focus on reducing the costs of doing business means that we are able to offset some of our input inflation, allowing us to protect pricesfor all of our cost-conscious customers whilst also absorbing some of the input inflation ourselves as evidenced by the decline in our gross margins.
Whilst the absolute levels of inflationary pressure are greater in Central and Eastern European markets, the degree of wage inflation is substantially offsetting this in the short term.
In Western European markets the acute spike in inflation in a stagnant wage growth environment has quickly resulted in absolute lower spending by consumers.
