LONDON (Reuters) - The cost of a basket of popular supermarket items rose 1 percent in July, the second straight monthly increase, a comparison website said on Tuesday, as fallout from Brexit hits prices on the high street.
After years of falling prices driven by rising competition among the big supermarket chains amid little or no consumer inflation, grocery prices have been tipped to rise as sterling weakness following Britain's vote to leave the European Union make imported goods more expensive.
Sterling has dropped around 10 percent against both the dollar and euro since the June 23 vote.
The cost of 35 popular products on shopping and comparison website mySupermarket.co.uk was 83.44 pounds in July, up from 82.83 pounds in June, the site said. The increase was led by products such as pasta, onions and pasta sauce - which rose 10 percent, 9 percent and 6 percent, respectively.
The basket of products is still 2.5 percent cheaper than a year ago, however.
MySupermarket is Britain's No. 3 online grocery retailer in terms of traffic, after the websites of supermarkets Tesco (L:TSCO) and Asda (N:WMT). It said its price trackers cover nearly 5,000 products across the big chains, which also include Sainsbury's (L:SBRY), Ocado (L:OCDO), Waitrose and Morrisons (L:MRW).
Annual British consumer price inflation, which was zero last year, picked up to 0.5 percent in June, the highest since November 2014.