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Consumer inflation expectations in May 2015
Date: 29-05-2015
NBP data: Consumers surveyed by GUS in the first half of May expect prices to rise only slightly over the next 12 months.
The NBP release on inflation expectations of consumers, published on 29 May 2015, shows that these expectations have remained low – i.e. below the tolerance band for deviations from the NBP inflation target – for almost two years now.
Quantification of the data obtained in the GUS survey conducted in the first half of May shows the average inflation index as expected by consumers over the next 12 months to stand at around 0.2%.
The expectations quantification procedure, which translates respondents’ subjective perceptions into the language of official inflation statistics, assumes that the price change in the preceding 12 months as perceived by consumers equals the CPI index available at the time of the survey. In May 2015, this figure was negative at -1.5 proc. Such a result introduces some difficulty to the interpretation of the survey results. This is because, in line with the structure of the survey question, respondents who expect a price growth are to specify whether growth will be faster, similar or weaker than presently observed. With this in mind, the May quantification procedure used the last recorded positive rate of current inflation (i.e. the August 2014 figure of 0.3%) to represent the perceived current inflation instead of the negative rate of inflation available at the time of the survey. The technical nature of this operation renders the objectivized assessment of inflation expectations more tentative, and the quantification results should be treated as an approximation.
Narodowy Bank Polski examines on a regular basis inflation expectations of not only consumers, but also the business community, financial analysts and professional forecasters. These provide one of the inputs to the monetary policy decision-making process.
See also: Consumer inflation expectations in May 2015