Cucumber salad with bitcoins

Measurement of inflation in Russia at the present time, and even more so their interpretation, is an extremely difficult task, so we are rather skeptical about the reasons for changes in the monthly, and even more so weekly, dynamics of the consumer price index. Accounting for all seasonalities and their shifts, actualization of the consumption basket, previous off-season declines in demand will require remarkable ingenuity from you to come to the conclusion: nothing happened.

Measuring inflation in Russia at present, and even more so their interpretation, is an extremely difficult task, so we are rather skeptical about the reasons for changes in the monthly, and even more so weekly, dynamics of the consumer price index (CPI). Accounting for all seasonalities and their shifts, actualization of the consumption basket, previous off-season declines in demand will require remarkable ingenuity from you to come to the conclusion: nothing happened.

In recent years, the Bank of Russia has been consistently publishing not only all-Russian, but also regional consumer inflation reports – both for specific regions and for federal districts. We are among the few people in the Russian Federation who read them, especially since so far they are unpleasantly full of templates (probably taken from teaching aids sent from Moscow) – and little content. The last time, in November, we turned to them in an attempt to understand something about “salad inflation” – the separation of prices for fruits and vegetables from the prices for a couple of goods that are standard in urban consumption – cucumbers and tomatoes. This pair differs from any root crop in wild price hikes even by Russian standards (see “Kommersant” of December 12): in November, the peak of their rise in price in the regions was 132%, and these prices can fall by 40–60% per month.

Even knowing how the CPI indicator works does not relieve cucumbers and tomatoes of the status of a mysterious matter. No one, for example, can confidently say why prices for cucumbers – in fact, electricity canned in water and fiber (the industrial cultivation of most of the “lettuce” in greenhouses is very technologically advanced) – fell in March 2022, and grew for almost the same tomatoes. . Regional inflation surveys of the Central Bank surprisingly rarely mention these items, which together occupy more than 1% in the Rosstat consumer basket. Meanwhile, at least in several regions of the Russian Federation with high “salad” inflation – in the Irkutsk region and its neighbors (as well as other regions: for example, we learned from the Central Bank reviews that tomatoes and cucumbers are now supplied to Crimea from “neighboring regions” ) — prices for greenhouse vegetables, previously balanced by supplies from China, are with a shift of a couple of months in antiphase with the price of cryptocurrencies. It’s not so much about consumption volumes: certain segments of the greenhouse market are powered according to gray schemes to power capacities at household tariffs, like mining. Due to its semi-legality, such a connection to the grid is a limited resource: the crypt is becoming more expensive – there is no “preferential” electricity for cucumbers, the air is falling – there are more over-planned tomatoes.

In general, it is better not to even think about what else is worth considering when thinking about the future dynamics of the key rate, designed to regulate inflation in the Russian Federation. Do not rack your brains: over the year, cucumbers, tomatoes, and bitcoin have fallen in price everywhere anyway.