Dutch consumer spends more on food

Over the past 10 years, Dutch consumers have been spending slightly more of their total household expenditure on food and non-alcoholic drinks. This is shown by new figures from Eurostat. Within the European Union, 13% of consumer spending is used for food.

Households in the European Union spent more than €2019 billion on food and non-alcoholic beverages in 956 as a whole. This is 6,8% of the gross domestic product in the EU. This means that an average of 13% of total consumer spending among European consumers is used for food. This makes it the third largest expenditure, after housing, water, electricity and fuels (23,5%) and transport (13,1%).

The country that spends the most in percentage terms on food and non-alcoholic drinks is Romania. In that country, consumers spend 26% of total consumer spending on this group. Lithuania is at 2 with 20,2%. Estonia follows with a percentage of 19,3%. In Ireland, Luxembourg and Austria, the percentage spent on food and non-alcoholic drinks is below 10%. At 8,6%, 8,9% and 9,7% respectively.

Dutch consumer spends more
In the period from 2009 to 2019, food spending has decreased or remained stable in most Member States. In the Netherlands we spent slightly more on food during this period. An increase of 0,4 percentage point to 11,3% is visible. The largest increase was visible in the Czech Republic: A plus of 1,3 percentage points to 15,5%. Slovakia and Hungary also show an increase in the share of expenditure on food and non-alcoholic drinks.

There are also declines. For example in Lithuania. There, the percentage of total household expenditure on food went down from 25,4% in 2009 to 20,2% in 2019. Malta shows a decrease of 3,5 percentage points and Poland a decrease of 3 percentage points.

Kimberly Baker

Kimberly Bakker is an all-round editor at Boerenbusiness. She also has an eye for the social media channels of Boerenbusiness.

k.baker @boerenbusiness. Nl

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