Tesco's new swingometer advertisements proudly declare it has the cheapest prices on the high street, but this week's The Grocer 33 finds the retailer to be only the third-cheapest retailer behind Morrisons and Asda. Morrisons won the battle of the price cuts by a sliver this week with a £41.12 basket - just 7p cheaper than Asda's and 28p cheaper than Tesco's. It slashed 78p off the price of its beef braising steak, making it the cheapest on the list. It also kept a kilo of apples at the low price of 59p. However, the recent heavy rain has reduced the availability of broccoli and pushed up its price across every retailer apart from Sainsbury's and Tesco. Asda couldn't quite match Morrisons' prices and wasn't helped by a 70p per kilo hike on loose apples and broccoli. But it did offer the cheapest Cadbury Dairy Milk, fresh double cream and Hula Hoops. Asda's own-label washing powder was at least 68p cheaper than its rivals' equivalents. Tesco is in third place again this week, matching Morrisons' prices on 16 items. However, it increased the price of bagged potatoes to £1.12 from 87p, making them 12p more expensive than Morrisons. It offered five items cheaper than anywhere else, including the cucumber for 50p. After lowering a raft of prices this week, Sainsbury's has closed the gap on the other retailers with a £41.79 basket, just 67p more expensive than Morrisons'. It slashed the Radox bath foam from £1.58 to £1.29 and cut 10p off its Cadbury Dairy Milk. While the gap between the cheapest four was narrower than ever, the gap between them and the most expensive two - Waitrose and Somerfield - widened. Somerfield moved from sixth to fifth place with help from price cuts on carrots and sausages. The Waitrose total was exactly £1 more than Somerfield's. Its aim to match cheaper retailers' prices on branded items faltered this week with only seven of the 13 branded products on the list matching Morrisons' prices.
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