BPS adds more goods in calculating inflation
BPS adds more goods in calculating inflation
JAKARTA (JP): The Central Bureau of Statistics said yesterday
that it will take a greater number of commodities into account in
measuring the country's inflation rate.
"Right now we use 220 different commodities in our
measurement, but we will include more commodities in 1997-98,"
the bureau's chief, Sugito, told reporters.
He added that the survey of living costs to collect data on
consumption patterns will be conducted every five years instead
of ten years as it has been done in the past.
"A five-year interval is considered more adequate to reflect
the prevailing changes in the consumption patterns of the
people," Soegito said.
He did not elaborate on how many more commodities will be
included in the inflation rate calculation.
The bureau said Indonesia's inflation last year reached 9.24
percent, while its economic growth rose by seven percent.
Sugito explained that to measure the inflation rate, the
bureau takes into account the price developments of various
commodities in the capital cities of the country's 27 provinces.
The prices of those commodities -- usually grouped under
foodstuff, housing, clothing and services -- are subsequently
indexed under a concept called Consumer Price Index (CPI) using
the total number of households in each of the capital cities as
the weights.
The CPI for each city is the price index of a group of goods
and services consumed by most households in the respective city
which is specified by a government survey on cost of living.
Inflation is considered a sensitive issue in Indonesia, where,
according to official figures of 1993, 13.6 percent of the total
population live below the poverty line.
The poverty line is drawn on the basis of a minimum daily
calorie intake of 2,100 and a certain quantity of non-food
consumer goods and services.
Both the bureau and the government claim that the bureau's
figures are accurate and never produced out of political
pressure.
"Counting inflation is a complicated business and it is not
that easy to engineer the figures," Sugito said. (hdj)