The start of the school year will have cost the French more. The price of school supplies increased by 8.47% compared to the start of the school year last year, however remaining below the general increase in consumer products (+ 12.75%)according to a survey by the DGCCRF which shows a rather wise behavior of professionals.
In detail, this inflation is “largely driven by the stationery department (+ 10.76%)”, against + 5.13% for the writing department, reveals the survey of the Directorate General for Competition, Consumption and of Fraud Prevention. This had been seized by several ministers after the publication alarming figures by consumer ociations.
The rise in prices of these products over one year observed at the end of August was slightly lower than that of the beginning of July (+ 8.47% against 9.07%). The DGCCRF believes that “this does not support the hypothesis that distributors, as a whole, have increased their margins as the start of the new school year approaches”.
A rise in wood prices
For stationery, the rise in prices is mainly due to the rise in the price of paper, notes the Repression of Fraud. On average over 2022, the producer prices of stationery items thus increased by +16.2% due to the rise in wood prices.
In West Francethe office of the Minister of Commerce Olivia Grégoire remarks that the increase in the production price of paper is therefore greater than that of the selling price, and therefore “that we cannot conclude that there were undue mark-ups on manufacturers and distributors.
The DGCCRF notes, however, that shelf prices “remain high”, despite the decline in paper and pulp prices. It attributes the cause, in particular, to the fact that the prices negotiated between suppliers and distributors were negotiated at the time of the only annual commercial negotiation, between December 2022 and March 2023, before the reflux.
An argument that seems to go in the direction of those who would like to see more frequent rounds of negotiations. The discount rate on these products is up slightly (+0.6 percentage point to 34.2% compared to 2022). “As early as the spring, I had asked distributors to include school supplies in their anti-inflation trimester: many did so and there were more promotions than last year”, welcomes Olivia Grégoire in Ouest -France.
She nevertheless recognizes that 8.5% inflation on supplies, “that’s still a lot”. “We must be able to work on group purchasing systems to buy even cheaper,” she said.