
Electricity prices rise by over 25% in last year -CSO
Figures from the Central Statistics Office show wholesale electricity prices have risen by 25.6 per cent in the last year.
Prices dropped 15.7 per cent compared to April's levels, and current prices are 71.3 per cent lower than the peak in August 2022.
Advertisement
Producer prices for food products increased by 5.1 per cent in the 12 months to April 2025, while the Food Products, Beverages & Tobacco Index was up by four per cent.
Notable increases were seen in dairy products, which increased by 22 per cent, meat products increased by 7.3 per cent, while there was a 17.4 per cent increase in chemical products.
Other increases included a 3.1 per cent increase in machinery and equipment, a 3.3 per cent increase in beverages and 3.1 per cent increase in plastic products.
Wholesale prices for construction products grew by 0.2 per cent in the month to April 2025 and rose by one per cent in the 12 months since April 2024.
Hashtags

Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles


Daily Mail
an hour ago
- Daily Mail
EXCLUSIVE One in four senior bank staff say closing branches 'isn't a concern'
More than a quarter of senior banking professionals say the closure of bank branches isn't a major concern for their business, figures seen by This is Money reveal. While as many as 27 per cent of senior bank staff said branch closures weren't a challenge to their business, the same cannot be said for the public. There is growing concern over access to bank branches, as more find themselves living in bank and cash machine deserts. Some 60 per cent of bank customers said closures have made it more difficult to speak to a member of staff, according to the data from credit information provider CRIF. A majority also said banks are now less focused on serving and looking after their customers than they were five years ago. A third said the increasing numbers of bank closures have made it more confusing to get what they need form their bank because they are now unable to speak to bank staff directly and instead often have to find information on their website. As many as 13million banking customers still rely on physical branches, recent figures from the Financial Conduct Authority reveal. Sara Costantini, regional director for the UK and Ireland at CRIF, said: 'Financial services have changed rapidly over the last decade, as people continue to embrace digital banking and manage multiple aspects of their finances online. 'The knock-on impact of this has been the reduction in physical, in-person banking services. 'While many working in the sector don't see this as a major challenge to their business, bank branch reductions are continuing to fuel concerns over the quality of customer services and what further closures may mean for the future.' How many bank branches are closing? According to data from Which?, some 379 bank closures have been earmarked for 2025, with a further 22 already planned for 2026. This is despite rules brought in last year that banks must prove to regulators that local communities will still have free cash access if they close their branch. Since 2015, there have been as many as 6,377 branch closures across the UK, meaning two thirds of all the branches open in 2015 have now closed. Bank closures are increasingly giving rise to the creation of banking deserts. Data from Nomis shows that in 2024 there are as many as 15 'grey zones' in the UK. North East Derbyshire, a district with more than 100,000 residents, has no bank branches whatsoever. In the CRIF survey, a fifth of consumers said they are concerned about the closure of more bank branches over the coming five years. Costantini said: 'The findings highlight the difficult tightrope that banks now need to walk, balancing the need to ensure their digital services remain cutting edge and up to scratch, which has become a competitive area for so many, without losing the personal touch that more traditional services offer.' Meanwhile, its not just bank branches that are shutting their doors. Between October 2019 and January 2024, there was 30 per cent reduction in the size of the UK's ATM network, likewise creating ATM dead zones and stifling Britons' access to cash. Some 23,000 ATM's are expected to be closed, leaving just 15,000 across the country, according to the UK's ATM network, Link.


The Independent
16 hours ago
- The Independent
Billion-dollar battery plant pauses construction amid electric vehicle and tariff uncertainty
A Japanese company has halted construction on a $1.6 billion factory in South Carolina to help make batteries for electric BMWs, citing 'policy and market uncertainty.' While AESC didn't specify what those problems are, South Carolina's Republican governor said the company is dealing with the potential loss of federal tax breaks for electric vehicle buyers and incentives for EV businesses as well as tariff uncertainties from President Donald Trump 's administration. 'What we're doing is urging caution — let things play out because all of the these changes are taking place,' Gov. Henry McMaster said. AESC announced the suspension in construction of its plant in Florence on Thursday, 'Due to policy and market uncertainty, we are pausing construction at our South Carolina facility at this time," the company's statement said. AESC promised to restart construction, although it didn't say when, and vowed to meet its commitment to hire 1,600 workers and invest $1.6 billion. The company said it has already invested $1 billion in the Florence plant. The battery maker based in Japan also has facilities in China, the United Kingdom, France, Spain and Germany. In the U.S., AESC has a plant in Tennessee and is building one in Kentucky. The statement didn't mention any changes with other plants. The South Carolina plant is supposed to sell battery cells to BMW, which is building its own battery assembly site near its giant auto plant in Greer. BMW said the construction pause by AESC doesn't change its plans to open its plant in 2026. AESC has already rolled back its South Carolina plans. They announced a second factory on the Florence site, but then said earlier this year that their first plant should be able to handle BMW's demand. That prompted South Carolina officials to withdraw $111 million in help they planned to provide. The company is still getting $135 million in grants from the South Carolina Department of Commerce and $121 million in bonds and the agency said a construction pause won't prompt them to claw back that offer. South Carolina is investing heavily in electric vehicles. Volkswagen-owned Scout Motors plans to invest more than $4 billion and hire 10,000 people for a plant to build its new electric SUVs scheduled to open in 2027. The state has for decades made big bets on foreign manufacturers like BMW, Michelin and Samsung that have paid off with an economic boom this century, but there is uneasiness that Trump's flirtation with high tariffs might stagger or even ruin those important partnerships. McMaster told people to relax as state and business leaders are talking to Trump's administration and things will work out. 'I think the goal of the president and the administration is to have robust economic growth and prosperity and there is no doubt there has to be changes made in our international trade posture and President Trump is addressing that,' McMaster told reporters Thursday.


Telegraph
17 hours ago
- Telegraph
Trump adds Ireland to trade ‘blacklist'
Donald Trump has added Ireland to the White House's official blacklist of countries for the nation's trade surplus with the US. Ireland joins fellow new entrant Switzerland in the US treasury's bad books, on a list that includes regular US targets including China, Japan, Germany, Vietnam and South Korea. Appearing on the watchlist puts Ireland, whose dominant industries are pharmaceuticals and technology, at the front of the queue of countries likely to attract Mr Trump's ire. If escalated, it can open the door to tariffs and other sanctions. The US president has previously singled out Ireland as a country whose trade surplus hurts the US economy. 'We do have a massive deficit with Ireland, because Ireland was very smart. They took our pharmaceutical companies away,' he told Micheál Martin, the Irish Taoiseach, in the Oval Office in March. He even considered putting a 200pc tariff on US pharmaceutical imports from Ireland. 'We don't want to do anything to hurt Ireland. We do want fairness,' he said. Ireland's goods exports to the US surged by 49pc in the first quarter of 2025 from the same period a year earlier, the country's statistics office reported this week, as exporters scrambled to get shipments off before any of Mr Trump's tariffs kicked in. The export surge fuelled a 9.7pc bounce in Ireland's GDP in the first quarter. Irish exports are under dire threat from Mr Trump's potential tariff of 50pc on goods imports from the EU. Dublin and other European capitals are now sweating on Brussels' negotiations with Washington to avoid this levy hitting the bloc in early July. On Friday, the German central bank warned that if the two sides did not strike a deal, Europe's biggest economy would remain mired in recession until 2027. German data issued on Friday showed a 1.4pc drop in factory output in April and a 10.3pc slump in German exports to the US from a month earlier, as pre-tariff, front-end loading of trans-Atlantic shipments came to a halt. The two sides' trade negotiators met in Paris this week. Maros Sefcovic, the EU trade commissioner, said afterwards that talks were 'advancing in the right direction at pace', while Jamieson Greer, the US trade representative, declared himself 'pleased that negotiations are advancing quickly'. They have slightly more than four weeks until the expiry of a 90-day pause on Mr Trump's tariffs on July 9. The president has frequently expressed hostility towards the EU over its trade policies, but was peaceable towards a visiting Friedrich Merz, the German chancellor, at a meeting in the Oval Office on Thursday. 'We'll end up hopefully with a trade deal,' he told reporters. 'I'm OK with the tariffs, or we make a deal with the trade.' The US treasury's report on Friday – a twice-yearly 'Monitoring List of major trading partners whose currency practices and macroeconomic policies merit close attention' – had some advice for both Germany and Ireland. Dublin was urged to focus on boosting activity in its domestic economy', to help Ireland 'address its over-reliance' on export-focused multinational companies. Berlin was told that Germany's unbalanced trade with the US was caused by German businesses and consumers failing to open their wallets and spend their savings.