While everyone is still struggling with high food prices, Canada's grocers are set to record profits in 2023.
图源：Daily Hive
That's according to a new report from the Center for Future Work, released on December 10.
The report states that although Canadian grocers, such as Galen Weston Jr. of the Loblaw Companies, claim that they are not profiting from rising food prices, this is not the case.
The report cites Statistics Canada's latest industry-wide financial data on food retail, which shows that food retailers are more than doubling their profits before the pandemic and that their profits are still growing.
Source: Internet
The data also showed that food retailers earned a whopping $4.6 billion in profits as of October 2023 and are expected to make more than $6 billion in total profits in 2023.
The report notes that the record level of profits for food retailers contrasts sharply with the profits of food manufacturing and import industries such as energy, which supply the food retail sector. In these industries, profits have fallen sharply from their all-time highs in 2022.
Industry-wide data also doesn't support the claim that grocery retail margins haven't changed and are consistent with food costs and price increases.
Food inflation has slowed over the past year, but remains higher than headline inflation. The report noted that food prices rose by 5.6% in the first nine months of 2023, while headline inflation was 3.1%.
Source: Internet
And it seems that Canadians will not get a respite when it comes to food spending in 2024.
The 2024 Canadian Food Price Report, released last week by Canada's top universities, predicts that overall food prices will grow by 2.5% to 4.5%.
This means that the average Canadian household of four is expected to spend $16,297.20 on food in 2024, a whopping $701.79 more than last year.
Over the past year, the federal government has stated that reducing the cost of groceries and food is a major priority and has introduced Bill C-56, which aims to amend Canada's Competition Act to increase the overall competitiveness of the Canadian grocery industry.
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