The government is set to update the consumer inflation index with the addition of several goods and services, with FY22 as the new base year as price rises have upset indices locally and globally.
Officials say the updated system to measure inflation is likely to be launched next fiscal year, beginning in July, as the existing one uses FY06 as base year and fails to portray a real picture of inflation.
The updating with the additional items in the basket will result in new weightings for the components of its Consumer Price Index (CPI) basket.
People in the Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics (BBS) said they already finalized lists of the goods and services, both for urban and rural areas.
Many items, including MFS or mobile-phone financial services, were not covered in the 2006 index.
Many more people spend a lot more on mobile telecommunications these days and this will significantly increase the weight of communications in the consumer basket, an official noted.
Usually, each decade needs to be rebased for the basket for changes in eating habits.
The BBS first rebased the CPI in 1973-74, and it continued until FY87.
Later it introduced FY86 as the base year with new weights, and in FY96, the BBS also updated.
And the existing yardstick is based on FY06.
Currently, the BBS collects price data from 140 (64 from urban, 64 from rural, and 12 from Dhaka City Corporation) main markets across the country to calculate the price indices.
Three price quotes per item are collected from each of the markets.
Prices of 151 food items as well as 271 non-food items in urban areas, 133 food items as well as 185 non-food items in rural areas (2005-06) are collected.
In collecting prices, four schedules (Darchak) are used (i) monthly rural retail (ii) monthly urban retail (iii) monthly urban wholesale and (iv) quarterly house rent.
Data is usually collected from select shops in each market or selected units or service providers in case of services.
In constructing price indices, the average price for each item is considered.
