(Friday 14th February 2020 Issue)
The
Gambia Bureau of Statistics (GBoS); the compiler of national consumer price and
indicator of inflation used by monetary and fiscal agencies, business, and
researchers will release the national consumer price indices tomorrow Saturday.
This
week, the Bureau trained media personnel and stakeholders on compilation of the
national consumer price with the objective to introduce the participants to the
methodological compilation of the consumer price.
Mawdo
Gibba, a price statistician said consumer price index is the social and
economic indicator to construct and measure changes over consumer price over
time.
‘‘The
Consumer Price Inflation (CPI) is to measure inflation of the economy, so that
macroeconomic policy is based on comprehensive and up to date information within the household consumers,’’ he said.
Mr.
Gibba also stated that some COLCOP classes contain both goods and services
because practical reason weight is difficult in the CPI which represents the
proportions of consumption expenditure on products by households in a specific
period.
He
added that alcohol beverage, health, clothing, footwear, transport and
communication are individual consumption services which are all classification
of COLCOP.
Fatou
Darboe, another price statistician said the updated and expanded CPI basket of
goods and services and rate of inflation from January 2019 to December 2019 as
measured by using the current August 2004 index is 7.3 percent, saying the
update January 2019 series is 3.2 percent with 4.1 percent different.
