Page 157 - Special Topic Session (STS) - Volume 3

STS538 Rameshwar S.
items; and the CPI was estimated as a weighted aggregate of a fixed basket of
these 400 goods and services popularly consumed in Sierra Leone. The index
covered sampled outlets from five urban towns representing the four
geographic regions of the country. The CPI reference year was 2007. All prices
collected were the prevailing retail market prices from six (6) markets in
Freetown, three (3) Markets in Bo Town, three (3) markets in Kenema Town,
three markets (3) in Koidu and three (3) markets in Makeni Town for weekly
prices, making a total of 18 markets as data collection centers for the CPI
exercise in Sierra Leone.
These aggregates were determined using the Classification of Individual
Consumption by Purpose (COICOP) for Household Final Consumption
Expenditure with 2007 as the new base year. The COICOP classification which
is an international standard to disaggregate the CPI has 12 functions excluding
the function of “All Items” which is the aggregate index of all functions.
Geometric mean formula was used to compute the mean of prices observed
for each product by elementary aggregate.
The Gambia
The Gambia Bureau of Statistics (GBoS) collected monthly prices of 250
items. The data collection was spread all over the country comprising of 28
different market centres consisting of 7 in the Greater Banjul, 11 in South Bank
and 10 in North Bank spread from Banjul to Basse. The prices were collected
once every month for each item, unlike the general practice of collecting prices
on a weekly basis.
The CPI had a base year 2004 (2004 = 100) and was the second series
which was derived from the household expenditure survey conducted in 2003-
2004 with national coverage. The indexes were estimated from the cost of the
basket in the current period’s prices by multiplying the quantities of items
purchased in the base period. A price index was obtained from the ratio of the
revalue basket to the total price of the basket in the base period. This was
referred to as a Laspeyre’s price index.

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