In summer, the 9-euro ticket, together with the introduced fuel discount, dampens inflation. According to economists, his successor will not noticeably relieve consumers.
According to economists, the planned 49-euro ticket for local transport, unlike its cheaper predecessor for nine euros, does not have what it takes to keep inflation in check. “It is not to be expected that the 49-euro ticket will slow down inflation,” said the economist at Landesbank Baden-Württemberg (LBBW), Jens-Oliver Niklasch, to the Reuters news agency.
The chief economist at Berenberg Bank, Holger Schmieding, takes a similar view: the rate of inflation will be pushed down “only to a small extent”, “perhaps by 0.1 percentage points”. The share of “passenger transport in local and long-distance traffic” and “passenger transport with buses and coaches” only make up a comparatively small proportion of the shopping basket used to calculate the inflation rate, said LBBW economist Niklasch. “In addition, long-distance rail transport and coach transport are not included in the 49-euro ticket,” says the economist. His conclusion is therefore: “Nice to have, but not a substantial brake”. The ticket is more of a funding measure for public transport, which makes sense for environmental reasons.
The transport ministers of the federal and state governments have basically agreed on a nationwide local transport ticket that should cost 49 euros. The 9-euro ticket, valid from June to August, in conjunction with the tank discount introduced at the same time, has led to the price increase being noticeably curbed, as the Federal Statistical Office found out. In September, the relief in regional and local public transport was lifted again: As a result, the prices for train tickets in local transport increased by 82.5 percent and for combined passenger transport by as much as 175.3 percent compared to the previous month.
The abolition of the 9-euro ticket and fuel discount contributed to the fact that the inflation rate rose to 10.0 percent in September, the highest level since 1951. “This phasing out together means a good one and a half percentage points of inflation,” said the scientific director of the Institute for Macroeconomics and Business Cycle Research (IMK), which is close to the trade union, Sebastian Dullien. In August, the inflation rate was still 7.9 percent. Experts assume that consumer prices will rise even more sharply in the coming months.
