Consumer price indices. Basket, weight structure and survey updates

As every year, Istat reviews the list of items included in the consumer price index basket and updates as well the survey techniques and the weights of each item to compile inflation.

The changes made in 2022, with reference to both the weights and the basket, reflect the constant evolution of household spending behaviours but also the impact of events, such as the pandemic still ongoing, which affect purchasing decisions and structure of consumer spending.

The 2022 basket for the Italian consumer price indices for the whole nation (NIC) and for blue and white-collar households (FOI) is made up of 1,772 elementary products (1,731 in 2021), which are grouped into 1,031 products and 422 product aggregates.

The 2022 basket for the Italian harmonized index of consumer prices (HICP) is made up of 1,792 elementary products (1,752 in 2021), grouped into 1,050 products and 426 product aggregates.

The review of the basket of products takes into account the changes in the household spending patterns (also due to legal provisions) and enriches, in some cases, the range of products representing consolidated consumption.

For 2022, the main products added to the basket that represent the changes in the household spending patterns, are: pulse oximeter, psychotherapy, molecular test and antigen test Covid 19, serological antibody test Covid 19, antigen self-test KIT Covid 19, poke bowls takeaway and streaming of audio content.

On the other hand, compact disk and hoverboard have been removed from the basket.

In total over 32 million price quotations are used each month to estimate Italian inflation. They come from different sources: 392,000 of them are collected locally by the Municipal Offices of Statistics (MOS) and concern 51.8% of the basket in terms of weight; over 100,000 are collected directly by Istat (22.1% of the basket) and about 30 million come from scanner data (13% of the basket) Then, more than 68,000 quotes are collected from automotive fuels prices database of the Ministry of Economic Development (4.5% of the basket). In addition, tobacco prices are collected from Customs and Monopolies Agency for the detection of tobacco (2.3% of the basket) and, starting this year, one million and half house rent prices are provided by the Real Estate Market Observatory of the Tax Office (2.7% of the basket). It is worth to note that some of the elementary prices deriving from different sources (in particular local data collection and scanner data) contribute jointly to estimation of inflation of 3.6% of the products of the basket.
Data coming from 80 municipalities are processed to estimate monthly inflation; the coverage of territorial survey, with reference to provincial population, is equal to 83.3%.

An additional group of 12 municipalities participate in the territorial survey with regard to a subset of products (local tariffs and some services) and for this subset, the territorial coverage is up to 90.3%.

In the municipalities, prices are collected in about 43,000 statistical units (including outlets, enterprises and institutions) and rents are collected for about 2,200 dwellings for social housing.

Price quotes collected through scanner data come from a sample of about 4 thousand outlets including hypermarkets, supermarkets, discounts, small sales areas and specialist drugs, which are representative of the whole Italian national territory and of 21 large retail chains. The weight of scanner data on the NIC basket is 13%.

The consumer prices of automotive/motor fuels (petrol, gas oil, LPG and methane) for the whole national territory are collected through the database of the Ministry of Economic Development. Istat uses information provided by around 12,800 petrol stations (66.8% of those in the data base).

With regard to expenditure divisions in the updated 2022 NIC basket, the weights for Transport and Restaurants and hotels increase, while at the opposite the weight for Food and non-alcoholic beverages decreases.

The expenditure division Food and non-alcoholic beverages continues to be the most representative in terms of weight (18.47%), followed by Transport (14.5%), Housing, water, electricity, gas and other fuels (10.99%) and Restaurants and hotels (9.57%).

On 22/2/2022 at 10:45 am the following attachments were replaced: Full text, HICP 2020: Basket of goods and services. Chief towns local CPI 2022.