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Lyudmila Presnyakova, director of the "Economics" project of the Public Opinion Foundation
The last couple of years, the problems of rising prices for people in general became somewhat less relevant. That is, if it used to be among the top issues that people cared about, in the last 2-3 years, in fact, the inflation rate in our country are perceived by the population, and people have become a little less worried about it.
People do not believe in the fact that prices are falling in principle. Everyone is convinced that prices are rising, but people now better perceive exactly how these prices are rising.
Now 90% do not say that prices are rising very high, like earlier.
For example, since January the proportion of those biggest alarmists who say that prices are rising faster than ever before has significantly decreased.
In January-February, it was about 46% -43%, and now, by the summer, this figure varies around 28-32%.
This, incidentally, is even contrary to official statistics, because it shows some growth, accelerating inflation.
For people, apparently, such pace is not so noticeable for worrying about it.
Almost half people say that the pace is like the previous one. That is, these people do not feel the pace so far.
Most people believe that prices will rise. There are even no people who expect a certain stable situation.
However, we see that we have only one-third population believing that prices are rising faster, and they themselves feel this inflation.
This is basically the same story, when many people said that they do not see the pace or the prices are rising with the same pace.
In fact, the price increase is mainly felt by the most vulnerable segments of the population who count literally every kopeck in the budget. They can see more.
We have a series of products which are most sensitive to people, almost no matter what happens to them.
Naturally, these are bread, baked goods, especially the people are guided by this, milk, meat and poultry, gasoline, medicine and utilities.
Actually, I should say that the housing sector, if all the other listed sensitive categories are more or less reduced in the summer, we can see that compared to the winter we have almost all of these sensitive categories going down, that is, the proportion of those who feel too big increase in prices for these products decreases, but housing again increases, and this has begun in July.
Obviously, this involves the fact that now the prices go up not by the New Year but in the summer.
And here there is a mixture of expectations and reality. But the rise in housing now is one of the most pressing problems, and it still varies greatly by region.
Usually, inflation is no longer perceived so acute, and utilities are a hot spot.
Moreover, we see that, as for bread, for example, there is rather a decline from the beginning of the year.
Even gasoline declines, although in reality it may not be entirely true.
Gasoline is also a pressing category for people, and not just for motorists.
For people this is always a marker: if gasoline prices start growing, everyone immediately begins to expect growth of the price of bread and so on.
The people link these phenomena, so the information about gasoline prices is perceived in such a way.
The prices for fruit and vegetables this year are quite stable.
There's not even a simple picture, when in the summer in the third quarter the proportion of those who are concerned about the rise in prices is reduced.
Eggs have moved slightly down this year, and the notion that there is something bad there has now reached probably the lowest rate.
Sugar in the summer is increasing, and it is probably due to an activation of storage.
That is, there may be not price increases but growing consumption, the feeling that it was spent more there.
Finally there are a series of categories, where people are less concerned about care price increases.
It is noticeable to them to a lesser extent. Clothes, shoes vary from 2009 to around 25%, and now 13% of all say that there is a large increase.
There are also building materials, transportation, electrical, cleaning and maintenance products.
Some of this is due to the fact that it is more rarely used.
People do not buy washing powder every day, not like the products, let alone building materials not every family buys them even one time per year.
Nevertheless, we see that in these categories the situation is sufficiently stable, and it is possible to define it in our terms as favorable.