The Federal Anti-Monopoly Service of Russia has received 3,380 calls since the launch of its hotline for price monitoring. Moscow residents sent 964 of the complaints. According to the Moskva Agency, most complaints concerned high prices for vegetables and fruit (231 calls), dairy products (192), poultry (131), meat (96), buckwheat (49), fish (43), ham (39), sausages (38).
The Russian Statistical Agency is monitoring prices for goods and services this year. Georgy Oksenoyt, deputy head of the Statistical Service, said that his structure was monitoring over 66,000 trade organizations in 272 cities, 38,000 shops, over 800 markets, over 50,000 organizations specializing in services, about 2,000 petroleum stations. In his words, the Service collects information on prices for 506 goods and services, including 125 food products, 2,600 non-food products, 121 types of services. Over 663,000 price quotations are collected every month.
As of December 22, the index of consumer prices was 110.4%, exceeding the index in previous years sufficiently.
The minimal volume index was set in Kabardino-Balkaria, Chechnya, Magadan Oblast, Ingushetia and the Chukotka Autonomous Region, totalling 103-106.4%. The average index in Russia was 108.5%, in Moscow over 108.6%, in Saint Petersburg 109.4%.
Since the second half of 2014, the index of consumer prices has been falling behind changes in the currency rate, although they normally overlap. "Until mid-2014, we can say that the index of consumer prices had generally been reflecting the tendency in the changing rates. They had almost been coinciding. But since the second half of 2014 and especially since autumn, of course, the currency rate has been rising significantly, the ruble weakening in the ratio to basic currencies, while the index of consumer prices continues - it is a sluggish index - moving within the framework of the trend. The Russian Statistical Service does not make forecasts, however we can still suppose that the difference would somehow move closer," says Oksenoyt.
