Stats agency to use Laspeyres formula for weekly CPI reports

MOSCOW, Dec 28 (PRIME) -- Russia’s Federal State Statistics Service will use the Laspeyres formula for its weekly inflation reports from January 2022 so that the accumulated weekly estimates become closer to the factual monthly price growth, the service said in a statement Tuesday.

The service will also reschedule weekly registration of prices to Friday from Monday to account for the food markets that don’t work on Mondays, or 36% of all markets used in the service’s reports, for calculation of the weekly and monthly consumer price indices.

Monthly registration of consumer prices will be done in the last five days of each month instead of the 20–25th. The service plans to register prices for gasoline and diesel fuel in all cities where it monitors prices, not only in the regional centers.

The service also expanded the number of positions on the list to 558 from 556, including 129 food, 292 non-food goods, and 137 services.

The service will start the experimental calculation of inflation using new data sources, including big data, simultaneously with the usual calculation. The experimental method will take into account information received from cash registers or receipts, from the state information system for goods labelling, and from web scraping or monitoring of online sales.

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