Summary of Oksana Zavorotko’s presentation (Ministry of Economy of Ukraine)

In the course of the presentation the user view on the price statistics system of indicators used for analyzing and forecasting to develop and provide measures of economic policy was introduced.

The main attention was focused on the indices reflecting price changes on consumer market: consumer price index, retail price index (tariffs) for goods in trade network, core consumer price index estimated by the SSCU and consumer price sub-index developed by the State Inspection on Price Control.

Particular methodological principles and practical issues for the calculation of mentioned indicators were regarded. The presentation stresses that consumer price sub-index is not able to replace consumer price index as it doesn't cover the whole consumer basket but serves only for operational monitoring of prices' fluctuations for main socially important goods and services (all in all 32 items) by decade.   

Price indices used for analyzing and forecasting of the indicators of the national accounting system were especially discussed (in particular GDP by production method and by method of final consumption).      

  Conclusions and recommendations

Future tasks for further improvement of price indices' estimation are connected with the range of problems to be solved in terms of methodology and practice.

First of all it refers to the necessity of adjusting price index weight structure to compensate some underestimations of expenditures for wealthy stratum of society in household living conditions survey. 

There is a need in calculating of harmonized consumer price index and its further implementing to provide international comparisons on consumer prices' increases as well as to estimate the prices' convergence and stability in terms of monetary and credit policy analysis.