On February 28, 2019, a press conference was held at the National Press Center on the topic “Inflation: the essence, causes, forms of manifestation and role in the economy”.

The event was attended by heads of the State Committee on Statistics, heads of departments of the central office, employees of statistical offices of the Tashkent region and the Tashkent city, teachers of the Center for retraining and statistical research, as well as representatives of the media.

As was noted at the press conference, inflation is a phenomenon that manifests itself primarily in the growth of prices for goods and services. To determine inflation, indicators are used that characterize the dynamics of prices. The key one is the consumer price index.

The consumer price index (CPI) is one of the key indicators of inflation in the consumer sector, which measures the total change in the cost of a fixed set of goods and services purchased by the average consumer, that is, it describes the change in the total amount of consumer spending of the population in a certain period of time with a constant amount of consumable goods and services. The consumer price index averages the movement of prices for all the variety of goods and services throughout the country.

As was noted at the event, according to data for January-December 2018, foodstuffs, on average, became more expensive by 14.9 %. This resulted in an increase in the CPI by 6.4 percentage points (hereinafter – p.p). Due to the rise in prices for bakery products (28.5 %), meat (21.7 %), dairy (12.9 %) and fruit and vegetable (4.7 %), CPI products increased by 5.5 p.p.

Prices for non-food products increased by 12.5 % in 2018, which led to an increase in the CPI by 4.4 p.p.The impact of price increases on clothing, shoes, fabrics and yarn, construction materials, medicines, fuel, and personal care products amounted to 3.5 p.p or 20.4 % of the total CPI increase.

In addition, tariffs and tariffs for services rendered to the country's population increased by an average of 15.8% during the year, which led to an increase in CPI by 3.5 p.p. The main factors of inflation in this area were the growth of tariffs for communication services by 11.7 %, sports services - by 15.5 %, household - by 12.2 %, housing and communal services - by 25.6 %, passenger transportation - by 14.8 %, educational services - by 17.0 %, which affected the overall CPI increase by 3.0 p.p.

At the press conference, it was noted that at the end of each month, the Office of Price Statistics publishes information on inflation and the consumer price index on the official website of the committee www.stat.uz, in the format of video clips with infographics on Uzbekistan 24 channel and TV and radio channels of  "Uzbekistan”. Information is also available to a wide range of users on the official the State Committee on Statistics page on Facebook and the Telegram channel.

The State Committee on Statistics also regularly holds seminars and round tables at leading institutions of higher education in the country, which is widely covered in the media.

At a press conference, the State Committee on Statistics specialists answered all questions from journalists.