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Consumer Price Index

Consumer Price Index Reports

The Consumer Price Index (CPI) measures the rate of change over the time in the prices of consumer goods and services, purchased or otherwise acquired by households, which households use directly, or indirectly, to satisfy their own needs and wants.

The CPI is one of the highest profile statistics compiled by a national statistics office. It is used as a headline measure of inflation, for wage and contract escalation, and in the compilation of the national accounts. It is also used extensively in analysis of the state of the economy.

The Timor-Leste CPI is calculated as a weighted average of the percentage price changes for a specified set, or ‘‘basket’’, of consumer products, the weights reflecting their relative importance in household consumption as measured in the 2014 Timor-Leste Survey of Living Standards (TLSLS). These consumer products and services are classified according to the Classification of Individual Consumption according to Purpose (COICOP) into ten Groups (see table below) and 35 expenditure classes. Each group and expenditure class has its own weight or measure of relative importance in the consumption of Timorese households. Separate weights are constructed for Dili, Baucau and all other Municipalities combined (“Other”).

The CPI was reviewed and re-weighted following release of TLSLS 2014 and the new Series 3 CPI was introduced as from August 2018. The Series 3 CPI is a monthly index for Timor-Leste, with analytical indexes for Dili, Baucau and ex-Dili also available each month. At the Group level, the weights for the Series 3 CPI as from August 2018 are as follows:

TABLE: Group weights for Timor-Leste CPI as from December 2012

Weights

No. Description In percent
1. Food and Non-Alcoholic Beverages

54.1

2. Alcohol and Tobacco

7.0

3. Clothing and Footwear

7.0

4. Housing

6.3

5. Furnishings, Household Equipment and Routine Household Maintenance

7.9

6. Health

1.9

7. Transport

5.8

8. Communication

4.8

9. Recreation and Culture

3.5

10. Education

1.8

Each month the National Institute of Statistics collects prices in the Dili Municipality for all the CPI items, and for the important items in the other Municipalities.

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