Istat basket changes, here's what enters the list

Goodbye e-book readers and electric hair clippers, doors open instead to smart light bulbs, all you can eat meals, five-a-side football and padel courses. These are some of the changes announced by Istat to the reference basket for recording consumer prices. The list is updated every year, also following the diffusion and use of some goods. In the 2024 basket – used to calculate the NIC indices (for the entire national community) and FOI (for the families of workers and employees) – there are 1,915 elementary products (there were 1,885 in 2023). Furthermore, for the elaboration of the indices, approximately 33 million pieces of information on prices coming from large-scale retail trade are analyzed every month, while 385 thousand are collected in the area by the municipal statistics offices, almost 235 thousand by Istat directly or through data providers and more than 157 thousand quotes from the fuel price database of the Ministry of Economic Development. As for private home rentals, approximately one and a half million observations were used to estimate inflation.

But Istat has also revised the survey techniques and the weights with which the different products contribute to the measurement of inflation: in 2024 the most significant innovation is of a methodological nature and concerns the use of the IVASS database for motor liability insuranceto the advantage – it is underlined – “of the accuracy of the estimate of the index for this service”.

The updating of the goods and services included in the basket, reminds Istat, takes into account both the changes in the spending habits of families and the evolution of rules and classifications and, in some cases, enriches the range of products representing consolidated consumption . Between the products most representative of the evolution of household consumption, which enter the 2024 basket there are devices for dehumidification and air purification, the smart light bulb and all-you-can-eat meals, but also kanzi apples and victory grapes, hair straighteners, electric bed warmers and some recreational and sports courses (tennis or padel , water aerobics, football and five-a-side football). Furthermore, the method of calculating the energy goods index has been adjusted.