Georgia's annual inflation rate in April 2020 was 6.9%
By Natalia Kochiashvili
Wednesday, May 6
The National Statistics Office of Georgia (Geostat) reported on 4th of May that Georgia’s annual inflation stood at 6.9% in April 2020, while on a monthly basis prices increased by 0.9% compared to the previous month. Accordingly, the population has to pay an average of 6.9% more to receive the product or service. Annual market inflation without tobacco increased by 4.1%.
The main influence on the formation of annual inflation was the increase in prices for the following groups: food and non-alcoholic beverages (up by 16.1% compared to the same period last year) and health care(up by 4.9%).
Compared to the same period last year, prices in this commodity group increased by 16.1 %, which was reflected in the overall inflation rate by 5.04%. Prices have risen sharply for fruit and grape subgroups by 45.4%. Prices have risen by 23.2% for dairy and egg products. Prices for sugar and sweets also increased (by 16.9%); On meat products (by 15.0%); On fish (14.9%); Vegetables (14.1%), as well as bread products (8.4%).
Prices have risen for the healthcare group with 4.9% and was reflected in the annual inflation rate of 0.39%. Price increases were observed for medical products, equipment and devices by 8.4%, and for outpatient services by 4.4%.
As for the monthly inflation rate, it was mainly influenced by the change in prices for the following groups: food and non-alcoholic beverages (3% increase) and transport (3% decrease).
Prices rose for the following subgroups: fruits (17.7%), vegetables and horticulture (7.1%), fish (6.2%), coffee, tea and cocoa (4.4%), sugar, jam and other sweets (3%), Bread products (1.6%), meat products (1.2%), oil and fat (0.9%). At the same time, prices fell on the subgroup of milk, cheese and eggs (-0.3%), as well as on the operation of personal vehicles (-3.8%)
Geostat explained that to calculate the inflation rate, prices were collected on the dates between the 10th and 20th of each month in about 1,800 retail outlets in 6 major cities: Tbilisi, Kutaisi, Batumi, Gori, Telavi and Zugdidi. The Covid-19 pandemic has had an impact on the price collection process, since some retail outlets were not functioning; out of 1,800 outlets 1,150 had canceled all operations and as a result, only up to 40% of the total amount of price database was registered.
The state of emergency in the country has also affected the working principles of Geostat. Due to the current situation, the data needed to calculate inflation has been collected through new rules. In particular, during the price registration, the personal visit of the interviewers to the facilities was minimized, and instead an online and telephone examination was used. Geostat also announced that it has introduced modern methods of data collection - scanner data and web-scraping methods from the website.
