energy prices have increased more than other consumer prices and the level of excise duties has increased somewhat. in the past ten years, the difference has been roughly 0. 3 - 0. 4 percentage point on average per year. traditionally, norway has been a net exporter of energy, but at the end of the 1990s the situation reversed. the price of energy is largely determined by supply and demand in the nordic energy market and to some degree by the energy balance in non - nordic countries. energy trading is important for norway. it reduces the vulnerability to precipitation levels and inflows. however, the majority of norway ’ s energy trading partners use coal, oil, gas and nuclear energy. production costs for thermal power are higher than for hydropower, which is produced in norway. if demand continues to increase more than production, electricity prices may continue to rise more than other prices in the future. the integration of china and other low - cost countries into the world trade system has resulted in far lower prices for finished goods. these countries ’ entry into the world market has also led to strong economic growth and high demand for oil and other commodities. this has pushed up both energy and commodity prices. oil prices have risen from close to usd 30 per barrel in october 2003 to about usd 70 in may this year. the rise is largely due to increased demand for oil, and china accounts for a substantial portion of global growth in oil demand. the trend rise in energy prices and the trend fall in import prices are partly attributable to the same process. excluding one of the effects and not the other could distort the measure of underlying inflation 2. we have regularly published three measures of underlying inflation which are published in the inflation report – the cpi - ate, the weighted median and the trimmed average ( 20 % ). recently, we have worked with several alternative measures of underlying inflation. one of these is a volatility - weighted indicator based on historical volatility of 96 sub - indices in the cpi ( coicop4 level ). the cpi weights have been replaced by weights that give the sub - indices with the widest historical fluctuations less weight, but no index has been fully excluded. this means that energy prices are included but they have considerably less weight than in the cpi. of the measures that we use for underlying inflation, the cpi - ate has tended to be lowest. all four measures indicate that inflation has been moderate in recent years and have implied an expansionary monetary policy.

coins across 12 centres, prepared a research paper on estimating counterfeit notes in circulation, and provided statistical basis of estimation of agency commission of commercial banks undertaking government business. 8. the surveys conducted by the department particularly on macroeconomic changes continue to provide valuable inputs for forward looking monetary policy formulation. these include industrial outlook survey ( ios ), order books, inventories and capacity utilisation survey ( obicus ), credit conditions survey ( crcs ), inflation expectations survey of households ( iesh ), consumer confidence survey ( ccs ) and survey of professional forecasters ( spf ). key findings of most of these surveys are now published on the rbi website simultaneously with the macroeconomic and monetary developments every quarter. this has increased visibility of our survey output and has improved considerably the timeliness in dissemination of survey results. however, this has also increased our accountability of research outputs and responsibility of maintaining good quality statistics. technical skills of our survey data analysis is now implicitly under public scrutiny. 9. for guidance on technical issues related to surveys, a high level technical advisory committee on survey ( tacs ) has been constituted. during the year, coverage of iesh survey has been extended to four more centres covering a total of 16 important centres. pilot survey on employment of fresh graduates from technical institutions was conducted during june - august, 2012 to collect placement data for 2010 – 2011 and 2011 – 2012 from 61 engineering and management institutes to assess trends in employment opportunities of fresh graduates. house price index compilation has been extended to 4 more cities, covering now total 10 cities. further, in order to complement this, the department has successfully introduced an asset price monitoring system ( apms ) based on housing loan account information available with banks. 10. a dynamic database called “ branch locator ” was released in the bank ’ s website providing detailed information ( like location, type of business ) on branches of commercial banks. this has helped banks in accessing locational information for branch expansion and financial inclusion. scope of bsr - 4 survey, one of the key rbi survey tailored for estimating household savings in the form of bank deposits, hitherto conducted on a sample basis, has been widened to a census from march 2012. the scope of bsr - 7 was also expanded to collect data on deposits by type ( current, savings and term ) from march 2012 quarter. a standing monitoring group has been constituted to implement enhancements to ibs as recommended by the bis committee on the global financial