The-seven-price-collectors with facilitator , Principal Statistician Anna Luvu
The National Statistics Office has concluded a one week training for its price collectors to ensure prices of selected samples of goods and services captured in the Consumer Price Index, the country’s official measure of inflation, reflect the reality of price behavior of the country’s goods and services in light of the COVID-19 Pandemic.
Seven price collectors from the Statistics Office in Auki, Noro, Gizo and Honiara participated in the training last week.
Facilitated by Principle Statistician Anna Luvu from the Economics section, the ‘Maintaining the Basket’ training looked at missing products, adjusting for changes in quality and substitution.
Ms Luvu said the training was important to ensure the price collectors take into account in particular, the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic when collecting their samples.
Each participant was asked to update their samples where necessary to maintain the principles of like-for-like comparison and to ensure they reflect what is actually happening in the shops and services in Solomon Islands.
“The price collectors are the eyes and ears of the Consumer Price Index unit,” Ms Luvu stressed.
“If they see an item missing they will conduct an investigation to see if it is temporary or permanent and the Price Control Unit will take appropriate measures to address it.
“Similar to products, outlets too go out of business every now and then. This is also the work of the price collectors to investigate and those outlets will be dealt with accordingly.”
The Consumer Price Index measures the changes to price levels for all the goods
and services consumed by households.
The National Government, businesses and individuals are influenced by the CPI in their respective decision making and planning purposes.
The government uses the CPI to adjust for changes in wages due to changes in living costs, monitor monetary and fiscal policies, while businesses can use it to monitor business costs, profit margins and investments. Individuals also use the CPI to compare prices to maximize expenditure choices and savings.