The Bureau of Labor Statistics said Wednesday it will publish the Consumer Price Index and its component indexes out to three decimal places, rather than just one decimal place, starting with the January CPI report that will be released in February 2007.

Officials said the change is being made so that financial markets and agencies such as the Federal Reserve will have more information on price changes.

BLS official Patrick Jackman said by making public the more precise index figures, those interested will be able to do their own calculations of the month-to-month percent changes.

Financial markets have been jolted in recent months by the CPI report, especially the figure on core inflation, which excludes food and energy.

The core inflation increase reported Wednesday for July was a more moderate 0.2 percent. But that came after four straight months when core inflation was rising by a more worrisome 0.3 percent each month.

Private economists argued that some of the 0.3 percent readings were overstating inflation and would have looked less threatening if the government had presented the index figures on which those readings were based out to three decimal places.

An increase of core prices of 0.249 percent would round to an increase of 0.2 percent while an increase of 0.251 percent would be rounded up to 0.3 percent even though there was little difference in the two figures.