SSE.LT

Real inflation in Lithuania reaches 6.0% in first five months of 2008 versus 5.8% officially published. Official data is adjusted by new weights structure introduced in the end of 2007, where food loses some contribution. If we use 1996 initial consumer products percentage contribution to total inflation, YTD CPI level reaches 7.1%, which is 1.3% higher than we are spoke by the department of statistics. This holds if official contributors inflation is taken.

To make matters worse, after conducting a small research on food prices I found another less pleasant number. Real current inflation in Lithuania piked by extra 0.6% during five months of 2008. In total, real inflation in Lithuania gets to 6.6%-7.7% level, depending on one of the several methodologies used by the department of statistics. Somewhat more than 5.8%.

I have found several old-dated shopping magazines on a fridge in my kitchen and just tried to compare prices in two of them between time. In most cases the prices in each years magazine rise by approximately 0.4%-0.6% higher than official numbers. I shall admit that I use only one mall’s information, which for sure makes the finding less reliable. However, you won’t find many competing malls here, and their prices do not differ too much, even across cities. After comparing several years data I came to the conclusion that we, the citizens of Lithuania, actually were stolen 4.6% of our GDP during the last 5 years only on change in CPI calculation methodology and another 2.4% – on real food prices.

In total, 7% of Lithuanian GDP, which approximately amounts to EUR 500m, was added from the air. The funniest thing is that all these numbers are available for the public, but they still try to manipulate the public. I think the majority of the citizens will agree.