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Press release

Consumer price indices. Basket, weight structure and survey updates

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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.

In 2020, the most important news is the extension to other channels of the modern distribution (discounts, small sales areas and specialist drug besides hypermarkets and supermarkets for which scanner data are used since 2018) of the use of scanner data concerning grocery products (processed food, products for house maintenance and personal care) to estimate Italian inflation.

The 2020 basket for the Italian consumer price indices for the whole nation (NIC) and for blue and white-collar households (FOI) is made up of 1,681 elementary products (1,507 in 2019), which are grouped into 993 products and 410 product aggregates.

The 2020 basket for the Italian harmonized index of consumer prices (HICP) is made up of 1,700 elementary products (1,524 in 2019), grouped into 1.012 products and 414 product aggregates.

The review of the basket of products takes into account the changes in the household spending patterns and enriches, in some cases, the range of products which represent consolidated consumption.

For 2020, Electric and electric hybrids cars, Electric kick scooter, Sushi take away, Food delivery, Beard and mustache service, Hearing aids, Beauty treatments for men, Washing and ironing of shirt, Semi-permanent nail polish application have been added to the basket.

In 2020 no product leaves the basket since all those already present do not show signs of obsolescence such as to justify their exclusion.

In total over 30 million price quotations are used each month to estimate Italian inflation. They come from different sources: 384,000 of them are collected locally by the Municipal Offices of Statistics (MOS); 121,000 are collected directly by Istat and about 30 million come from scanner data. In addition, almost 72,000 quotes are collected from automotive fuels prices database of the Ministry of Economic Development.

Reference period: Year 2020

Date of Issue: 04 February 2020

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