Belarus
Official title
Consumer Price Index for food, non-food goods and services.
Scope
The index is computed monthly and covers the whole country.
Official base
December 1990 = 100.
Sources of weights
The weights and selected items are obtained from annual household
expenditure survey. Actual consumer expenditures of the urban
population are used for deriving the weights which are updated
annually.
Weights and composition
| Major groups
| Number
of items
| Weights
| Approx. No. of
price
quotation
|
| Food | 133 | 65.50
| ...
|
| Non-food | 167 | 22.07
| ...
|
| Services | 43 | 12.43
| ...
|
| Total | 343 | 100.00
| ...
|
Household consumption expenditure
The definition of consumption expenditure used for deriving the
weights includes the values of consumption of food, non-food items
and services in kind and in cash.
Sample selection
Not available.
Method of data collection
Prices are collected monthly by agents in state, cooperative and
private shops, at farmers and municipal markets and service
establishments distributed over the six regions of the country
and in the city of Minsk. Mail questionnaires are used for collecting
prices for transport and communication services. Price data are recorded
in 31 towns, whose population amounts to 63 per cent of the total
population. Average prices for fresh fruit and vegetables are
obtained by dividing the total value of items sold by the
quantity sold. The number of prices to be registered in outlets
of different ownership types is determined on the base of
information provided by the household survey on places of
purchase.
Housing
Rent quotations for state-owned dwellings, house-building
cooperatives, hotels, etc. are collected monthly. Rents for
sate-owned dwellings relate to one-room flats and rents
obtained from house-building cooperatives relate to the cost of
maintaining 1 m2 of living area. With regard to hotels, data on
payment for one night in a double room, category 1, first class,
in two hotels in a town are collected.
Specification of varieties
Detailed specifications are used for each item.
Substitution, quality changes
If an item disappears from the market, it is substituted by a
similar item. When a new item is introduced its base price is
estimated on the basis of price movements of similar items.
Quality changes are taken into account by applying a quality
coefficient to the base price obtained by consulting item
specialists. If it is established that the quality of the item
has not changed, then the coefficient is 100. A coefficent
lower than 100 means there is a decline in the quality.
Seasonal items
Fresh fruit and vegetables are treated as seasonal items. During
the off-season missing prices are imputed based on the price change
of non-missing items.
Computation
The index is computed according to the Laspeyres formula as a
weighted arithmetic average with fixed base corresponding to
1989-1990.
In computing item indices, price relatives of the current and the
base periods are used. Group indices are computed as a weighted
harmonic mean of item indices.
Other information
None.
Organisation and publication
The Consumer Price Index is published monthly by the Ministry of
Statistics and Analysis in official reports.
Monthly bulletin Consumer Price Indices for goods and services
and Producer Price Indices for Industrial products