The Bureau of National Statistics held a meeting with journalists, where they presented alternative tools for collecting data for calculating inflation. At the event, representatives of the Bureau spoke about the methodology for calculating inflation, and also presented innovations introduced for high-quality data collection. The new methods involve monitoring inflation based on data from fiscal checks and collecting data through a mobile application.

Currently, registrars manually enter data on prices for goods and services for surveyed objects. Monthly prices are fixed for more than 500 goods and services (403 goods, 105 services). Innovations will ensure the efficiency of generating statistics, optimize costs and improve the quality of data. Thus, registrars will register prices in a specially created mobile application, and fiscal data with the prices of goods will be promptly sent to the processing center.

“Currently, prices are registered by specialists of the Bureau's territorial departments. Each of them keeps a paper diary, where he writes down the price dynamics manually. Today we are presenting a mobile application where you can not only record price offers, but also scan a product’s barcode and even take pictures of it, confirm the location of an object and transfer data online. Automation of manual labor will reduce the time for data processing,” said Zhandos Shaimardanov, head of the Bureau of National Statistics of the Republic of Kazakhstan.

Thus, this innovation will not only improve the quality control of data collection, but will also expand the possibilities for price analysis.

“We strive to continuously improve the accuracy and reliability of data collection methods, with one of the most important challenges being the use of alternative sources such as fiscal receipts. This technique is used by some European countries, such as Belgium, Sweden, Switzerland and others. We have also started implementing a similar project in Kazakhstan, involving experts from the International Monetary Fund. To calculate these data, fiscal information is collected at the Ministry of Finance, and then sorted and classified in accordance with the catalog being developed. This will allow us to classify goods from checks according to the structure of the consumer basket,” said Kuanyshbek Zhakypbekuly, Director of the Price Department of the Bureau.

As of today, about 100 million records of purchased goods and services are received by the Bureau in pilot mode from fiscal operators every week, and about 10 million records are analyzed for 53 types of commodity items. In total, data from over 12,000 cash registers are included in the analysis.

The Bureau will gradually expand the list of recognizable goods and services in order to fully switch to fiscal data when calculating inflation. To do this, it is necessary to introduce a single catalog of goods and services, which will ensure the purity and comparability of data, as well as confirm the methodology from the IMF.