(Bloomberg) --
Sweden's Riksbank suggested its number crunchers were thrown off by changes in consumer behavior, including a sudden spike in demand for toilet paper, making it harder for policy makers to interpret inflation data.
Since the onset of the coronavirus pandemic, consumer price statistics “have been unusually difficult to interpret,” Deputy Governor Henry Ohlsson said on Wednesday.
Swedes bought “more toilet paper and fewer trips abroad than the weights in the consumer price index imply,” according to Ohlsson. The development made it harder to predict price moves, with some subcomponents in the index all but disappearing, and others exceeding their standard weights.
Swedish underlying inflation was zero in May, compared with the Riksbank's target of 2%.
Danske Bank's chief economist, Michael Grahn, implied in a Tweet that the Riksbank should have been able to foresee the changes in consumer behavior.
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