From New Zealand to Nigeria: the global toll of the cost of living crisis

theguardian.com:

Photos of iceberg lettuce heads with hundred-dollar price tags have gone viral in recent weeks – a tongue-in-cheek nod to intensifying cost of living pressures that include rising food, fuel and energy prices.

The cost of vegetables alone has increased 12.7% year-on-year. Recent floods ruined crops in New South Wales and Queensland, while the cost of fertiliser is up 120% from 24 months ago.

Soaring power prices are also threatening to stoke further inflationary pressures. Gas shortages and climbing wholesale power prices across some states could lead to a particularly bleak Australian winter for some.

Low-income earners have been hardest hit.

Jeff Laming, a 42-year-old disabled single father from regional Victoria, can’t afford to eat roughly five days out of every fortnight. “We haven’t eaten fresh fruit or vegetables since February,” he said, adding that he is suffering from scurvy.

“Frozen oven-baked meals, low-quality mince meat, two-minute noodles and no-name brand pasta, paracetamol and occasionally soap” were all the items on a regular weekly shop, he said.

Samantha Lock in Sydney

Inflation is running at 9%, the highest in 40 years, and an average household could face a €500-€600 increase in the cost of living by the end of the summer, one leading economist has forecast. Belgium’s National Bank has said citizens are offered some protection because of indexation policies linking wages to prices, although it also warns that this threatens competitiveness.

Altamirano Zoila Palma, who has been running the Saint-Jossefriterie in Brussels for 12 years, said bills had gone “really over the top”. Gesturing at the counter, the Ecuadorian-born trader, who works six days a week, 12 hours a day, added: “Everything has gone up: the