Africa-Press – Uganda. The Uganda Bureau of Statistics has increased the number of items in the basket of goods/services used to compute the consumer price index from 274 items to 344 items for compiling the changes in prices of goods and services over time widely known as inflation.
Uganda Bureau of Statistics says this is because it has rebased the Consumer Price Index (CPI) from 2009/10 series to 2016/17 series capturing the number purchased or otherwise acquired by households.
In doing so, UBOS says items in the previous 2009/10 basket whose relative importance has reduced have been dropped and new items with prominent importance, identified by their share in the household consumptions have been included.
The Consumer Price Index (CPI) is rebased every five years simply meaning that some items are removed and replaced with news or adding new items on the old one. This is because consumer preferences are continuously changing. Therefore, for the CPI to accurately measure inflation, the goods and services that are included in the CPI basket should reflect these updated preferences.
The rebased CPI figures have been reflected by the Uganda Bureau of Statistics in the Consumer Prices Index it released last evening capturing the changes in prices of goods and services using the new methodology from February 2021.
The rebased methodology has seen the level of inflation rate significantly reducing, for instance, in the figures for March 2021 the inflation decreased to 2.7 per cent compared to 2.3 in February 2021. The one for April Annual Headline Inflation stood at 2.1 per cent and for May dropped to 1.9 percent.
All these figures are generally lower than the first one which UBOS used 2009/10 to calculate the CPI.
The Executive director of the Uganda Bureau of Statistics, Dr Chris N. Mukiza said the new rebased series includes several methodological improvements which ensure the continued accuracy and the representativeness of the CPI.
“The rebasing has been guided by the internationally accepted best practices as well as the Common Market for East and Southern Africa (COMESA) and the East African Community harmonized Consumer Price Index for regulations,” he said.
