The Consumer Price Index (CPI) is a measure of changes in prices of goods and services within the household basket. In Rwanda the CPI is a Modified Laspeyres index that currently measures changes in prices of 1,136 goods and services in five provinces in Rwanda.
CPIs triple role:
Economic: The CPI permits monthly inflation monitoring. It is equally used as a deflator for a number of economic aggregates(consumption, revenues…) for measuring evolution in real terms (at constant prices).
Social-economic: In this case the monthly published CPI is also used in adjusting a number of public and private agreements like minimum wages, pensions, social benefits to mention but a few Monetary and
Financial: The CPI is as well used extensively in monetary policy and in regional and international price comparison purposes.
Production and Publication: The CPI in Rwanda is published monthly by the National Institute of Statistics of Rwanda that works in collaboration with the National Bank of Rwanda on the 15th of the proceeding month. In constructing the index, the consumption nomenclature adopted is derived directly from the international nomenclature COICOP (Classification of individual consumption by purpose; SNA revision IV 1993).
It consists of 12 divisions that are further divided into groups, classes, categories and products and services. The 12 categories include :
- Food and non-alcoholic beverages
- Alcoholic beverages and Tobacco
- Clothing and footwear
- Housing, water, electricity, gas and other fuels
- Furnishing, household equipment and routine household maintenance
- Health
- Transport
- Communication
- Recreation and culture
- Education
- Restaurants and hotels
- Miscellaneous goods and services