Macau, China
Official title
Indice de Preços no Consumidor (Consumer Price Index).
Scope
The index is computed monthly and covers all households living in
the peninsula of Macau (excluding the households living on boat or
temporary housing in islands).
Official base
October 1988-September 1989 = 100.
Source of weights
The weights and selected items were derived from a household expenditure
survey conducted during one year between April 1987 and April 1988 among
a random sample of 2,359 households. The reference period for
expenditure data for each household was two weeks. The weights were not
adjusted to take account price change between the survey period and the
base period.
Sampling
The items were selected according to the weights derived from the
household expenditure survey, the popularity of the items and the
possibility that they could be regularly and continuously priced over
time. The weights of items not selected to be priced were redistributed,
equally or proportionaly to the similar items within the same group.
The most famous establishments, or those which process a large sales
volume on the priced product are selected.
Weights and composition
| Major groups
| Number of items
| Weights
| Approximate number of price quotations
|
| Food
| 72 | 42.03 | ...
|
| Alcoholic beverages and tobacco
| 4 | 2.22 | ...
|
| Housing
| - | - | -
|
| Fuel and light
| 4 | 4.78 | ...
|
| Clothing and footwear
| 8 | 1.63 | ...
|
| Durable goods
| 29 | 7.25 | ...
|
| Miscellaneous goods
| 26 | 2.91 | ...
|
| Transport
| 29 | 4.97 | ...
|
| Services
| 17 | 4.88 | ...
|
| Total
| 35 | 8.14 | ...
|
| Major groups
| 224 | 78.81 | ...
|
The classification sceme does not confirms with the SNA classification.
Household consumption expenditure
The definition of consumption expenditure used for deriving the
weights covers all expenditure of households for the purchase
goods and services. Since these payments were made at the moment of
purchase, all consumption expenditure of households during
the cycle was recorded.
Credit purchase was considered as expenditure only if they were paid
for during the cycle. Goods and services received by the household as
income in kind were valued at market prices. Rents were imputed for
home ownership and free housing. Excluded were income and other direct
taxes, mortgage, investment, betting, contribution to pension funds,
life insurance, etc.
Method of data collection
Prices are collected by personal visits, telephon calls or postal
questionnaires from markets, retail outlets and service establishments
in all five localities. Fresh food prices are collected daily, twice,
three times a week or weekly, those for other food items each month.
Each day, enumerators collect the prices for fresh food in the market
early in the morning and than the prices for other goods and services
according to the time schedule.
Prices for alcoholic drinks, tobacco, clothing, footwear, durable
goods, miscellaneous goods are obtained monthly and those for the
remaining items once every three or six months.
Sudden price changes of items such as housing and car insurance,
gas, electricity, water, newspapers, etc. are recorded half-yearly.
Prices of books are collected once a year.
Discount and sale prices not exceeding 20 per cent are collected and
used in the index calculation. Black-market prices, second-hand
purchases and trade-in of used goods and in part payment for new goods
are not taken into account. For credit-terms and hire-purchases, the
price of cash payments is adopted.
The prices actually paid by consumers buying the items and services
for the purpose of consumption are used.
Housing
The rent component is excluded from the index.
Specification of varieties
There are detailed specifications for each item, i.e. variety, quality,
place of origin, brand, unit, size, packaging, etc. Prices are
collected following the same specifications each month.
Substitution, quality change, etc.
In there are quality changes or a given type or quality disappears
from the market, the following methods are used: either direct
substitution using a linking method between the old item (variety)
and the substitute item (variety) or recalculation of the price
relative which is imputed in the existing sub-group.
Seasonal items
Seasonal adjustment methods are under the study.
Computation
Diferent formulae are used to calculate index for different types of
items. For fresh food items, avarage prices are computed and Laspeyres
(fixed base weights) is used, while for other food and for non-foods
items price relatives are computed and Laspeyres chain index is used.
Avarage retail prices for certain items are published in the monthly
publications.
Other information
The revision is in progres and the new series of CPI will be published
with base of 1995.
Organisation and publication
Direcçao de Servicios de Estatistica e Censos: Indice de Preços no
Consumidor
(Macau).
Idem: Metodologia do Indice de Preços no Consumidor
.