Inflation is soaring and businesses can no longer afford to prevent passing on rising costs to their consumers. Shop prices across Britain suffered their largest spike in over nine years during January as a result of this, according to latest data from the BRC.

Just before the BOE meeting scheduled for later this week, the British Retail Consortium (BRC) revealed that shop prices across the country surged by 1.5% YoY in the month of January, a far higher spike than the 0.8% rise seen in the previous month. January’s figure was also the highest reading seen since December 2012.

The surge was driven by a sharp increase in food prices, which rose by 2.7% in January, after the 2.4% increase in December. Meanwhile, non-food prices increased by 0.9% during January after falling by 0.2% in the last month of 2021, further fueling the high reading in overall shop prices.

In December, Britain’s CPI had risen to 5.4% – a three-decade high, and coming in well above the BOE 2% target for inflation. Rising inflation had pressured the central bank into a rate hike and more are expected this year as inflation is likely to remain high in the coming months.

There are widespread expectations among economists that the BOE could implement its second rate hike from 0.25% to 0.50% when it meets tomorrow. In addition, it could also announce an end to its asset purchase program soon as Britain focuses on economic recovery from the pandemic and the Omicron variant failed to cause much economic damage.