“Consumers and industries in the netherlands scaled back their use of natural gas significantly between July and October, while the country’s gas imports went up 15%, Statistics netherlands said,” reads the most recent tweet from IANS India.

Consumers and industries in the #Netherlands scaled back their use of #naturalgas substantially between July and October, while the country's gas imports went up 15 per cent, Statistics Netherlands (CBS) said. pic.twitter.com/vtmAId7gV6

— IANS (@ians_india) December 9, 2022

The Netherlands claims that energy price calculation bias caused inflation to be overstated.

The Dutch government’s statistics office, Statistics Netherlands (CBS), is looking into a problem with how it measures energy prices. It claims that this has led the country, and possibly other European nations, to overstate inflation.

In October, Dutch inflation was 16.8% higher than the 10.6% average for the eurozone.

The agency only uses recently signed contracts to figure out how much gas and electricity cost in a typical Dutch household’s basket of goods and services. However, many households have contracts that were signed at a lower price in the past.

In a statement announcing plans to implement a system in the middle of 2023, the agency stated, “This means the price information obtained through the current observation method is actually ahead of the average price development of energy for households in the Netherlands.”

The agency stated that because energy costs account for approximately half of this year’s price rise, the impact may be significant.

Instead of only collecting information about new contracts, it has recently begun collecting information from utility companies about all existing contracts.

It believes that inflation in August may have been only 7.5-9.6%, as opposed to the reported 12%, based on data from approximately 75% of households.