Russia’s central bank will assess utility tariff impact using full October inflation data

Russia’s central bank needs data for the whole of October to assess the actual inflation contribution from higher utility tariffs, Deputy Governor Alexey Zabotkin said on October 13.

Weekly statistics cover a different selection of goods and services from the monthly consumer price index, Zabotkin explained. They therefore cannot establish the tariff increase’s contribution for October across the full set of observations.

The previous estimate of 0.7 percentage points was based on the planned tariff increase from October 1. The central bank intends to calculate the actual contribution after receiving monthly statistics.

The Economy Ministry earlier estimated that tariff increases contributed 0.75 percentage points to price growth in the week from September 29 to October 5. Overall weekly inflation was 0.96%, compared with 0.21% excluding utility services. Those figures describe the weekly calculation and do not replace an assessment for the full month.