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 2021, 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 2021 basket for the Italian consumer price indices for the whole nation (NIC) and for blue and white-collar households (FOI) is made up of 1,731 elementary products (1,681 in 2020), which are grouped into 1,014 products and 418 product aggregates.

The 2021 basket for the Italian harmonized index of consumer prices (HICP) is made up of 1,751 elementary products (1,700 in 2020), grouped into 1,033 products and 422 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 2021, the main products added to the basket (and that represent the changes in the household spending patterns) are: nutritional supplements, helmets for two-wheeled vehicles, surgical masks, FFP2 face masks, hand sanitizer gel, electric car charging, electric scooter sharing, certified email services and anti-abandonment device.

In 2021 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: 390,000 of them are collected locally by the Municipal Offices of Statistics (MOS) and concern 56.4% of the basket in terms of weight; 100,000 are collected directly by Istat (22.6% of the basket) and about 30 million come from scanner data (12.8% of the basket). In addition, more than 80,000 quotes are collected from automotive fuels prices database of the Ministry of Economic Development (3.6% of the basket). For the remaining 4.6% of the basket price quotations are collected using by mixed techniques.

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%.

Note. On 19 February 2022 at 6:24 pm the full text of this press release has been replaced as a result of the update of the NIC, HICP and FOI weights, as well as the related tables and comments.