Review of the consumer price index during the transition period in Romania

In the transition from a super-centralized economy to a market economy, the consumer price index is one of the prime indicators through which the state of the nation can be characterized.

The conversion from the old system of following the evolution of consumption prices to a new system of the sort used by countries with market economies has been done on the basis of UN/ECE recommendations, on specialized literature, and particularly with the help of INSEE-France.

The implementation of the new consumer price index takes into account existing conditions and goals, mainly:

– elaborating a classified list of representative products and assortments covering an area as large as possible in order to eliminate the influence of the absence of some commodities having an important share. Also, for the same reason, it has been established that prices should be collected weekly, and prices for services bimonthly;

– establishing the structure of consumption expenditures by products and assortments on the basis of family budgets, removing particularly self-consumed household products or products not used for human consumption;

– elaborating the instructions for collecting prices and training staff.

Those were the actions taken that led to the construction of a consumer price index within a two-month period. The goal of the next period is to finalize the procedure.