The services group may see a greater weight in the future in the structure of the consumption basket. Starting with 2013, Romania will align to the European regulations concerning the calculation of inflation, said Constantin Chircă, head of the Statistics Department of the National Bank of Romania (NBR), at the EU-COFILE seminar, hosted by the NBR, Alpha Bank and the Romanian Banking Association (ARB).

"Starting next year, the National Statistics Institute will change the methodology used for calculating inflation to harmonize it with the other countries in the European Union. Right now, Romania is the only country which is uses the method of average household spending instead of the national accounts".

The NBR official added that the structure of the consumer basket on the average household, will no longer be determined based on family expenses, but also using national accounts.

Compared to other countries in the European Union, the weight of food expenses in calculating inflation is 37%, much higher than the EU average.

Constantin Chircă also said that at the present time, the structure of the average expenses in an average household is used, which means that certain basic goods have much greater weight than they do in real life, and the expensive products or services are not recorded or they have very little weight in the calculation of inflation.

The NBR official said that the polls concerning the budgets of families are run on a sample of 10,000 households which are representative on a national level, and self-consumption and expenses with the own output aren't being taken into account.

The inflationary shock of September, when the monthly rate was 1.18%, will be felt until August 2013, and this evolution has caused the Central Bank to revise the inflation target for this year as well, according to Constantin Chircă.

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