On February 6th, the prices committee of the CBS, chaired by its chief statistician, Shlomo Yitzhaki, published its bi-annual review of weightings for the consumer price index (CPI). The key change is an unusually sharp jump in the weighting for the housing component-which measures rental prices-from 20.7% hitherto to 24.4%. Consequently, housing will now comprise almost one-quarter of the CPI and developments in this sector will have an even bigger influence on overall inflation. Components with lower weightings included food (from 18.4% to 16.9%) and transport and communications (from 21% to 20.5%).