Sainsbury’s CEO warns NI contributions will cause spike in prices

Sainsbury’s CEO Simon Roberts has warned that the rise in employer’s national insurance contributions announced in the Autumn Budget will cost the supermarket £140m, Sky News has reported.

Roberts said that the rise of NI would cause inflation to be higher than originally predicted and that Sainsbury’s won’t have the “capacity to absorb a barrage of costs” in the next year. 

Roberts said to Sky News: “This impact on national insurance was unexpected and is coming in fast, it will have a very significant impact, it will impact our costs base… and our suppliers’ cost base. 

“Business rates will go up this year. I certainly didn’t expect them to go up next year, I expected them to go down”.

When asked about what impact NI contributions will have on the grocer’s workshop he clarified that it is still “too early to be specific” but that the chain will have to take “difficult decisions” as a result. 

The comments follow Chancellor’s Reeve’s budget on 30 October where she announced that employers’ national insurance contributions will rise by 1.2%, from 13.8% to 15% from April 2025. 

In addition, the threshold at which businesses start paying National Insurance on a worker’s earnings will be lowered from £9,100 to £5,000, a measure that will raise £25bn a year.

Sainsbury’s recently reported that profit before tax rose by 4.7% to £356m in its half-year results, with underlying operating profit up by 3.7% to £503m. The group currently maintained its outlook of “strong profit growth” for the full year.