LAHORE, Dec 12: The Federal Bureau of Statistics (FBS) is said to have deferred till the beginning of next fiscal year its plans to carry out periodic family budget survey of different income groups or estimation of weights assigned to different products for re-basing and updating the Consumer Price Index (CPI), the main indicator used for determining the inflation rate in the economy.
“The survey was originally planned for 2006-07 and was supposed to be undertaken from July 1 this year. However, it could not commence on time and the FBS has decided a couple of days ago to postpone it till the beginning of the next fiscal year 2007-08,” a source, who wished not to be identified told this reporter on Tuesday.
The source said several factors were behind the postponement of the survey for one whole year. “These included usual bureaucratic lethargy, failure to raise funds for the survey, and others,” he said.
The family budget survey was used to be conducted in Pakistan every 10 years for updating weights assigned to various products and rebasing CPI for a better assessment of inflation in the economy.
After the last such survey carried out in 2000-01, it was decided to “halve the space between the two consecutive surveys so that weights assigned to different products forming CPI could be revised every five years for a more authentic and reliable estimation of inflation.
“Weights assigned to different products assume a critical importance in the estimation of price indices as prices of products do not change at the same rate. Since the consumption patterns change over time weights are periodically revised, and base of indices changed frequently. Before 2000-01, CPI was rebased every 10 years, but after that it was decided to rebase the index every five years to make it more current and reliable,” the source said.
The source said the number of items in the index (CPI) would also increase after the forthcoming family budget survey, and the consumer prices may be available on quintile basis.
Further, he said, the number of cities from where price quotations for CPI were taken was also expected to be increased to 54 from the existing 35. These include small and large towns and cities. The survey does not cover rural areas because there are no price quotations from there, and small towns are included in it on the assumption that they would represent the changes in prices in the rural areas.
The sources, however, said the FBS did propose to determine the consumption patterns in the rural areas because they are different from the urban areas, and thus needed to be taken into consideration even if there are no price quotations from the rural areas, in the forthcoming family budget survey.