The Consumers Association of Malawi (Cama) has joined calls asking for the revision of the basket of goods and services used to measure inflation suggesting that such a move would make the consumer price index (CPI) more relevant and accurate.<\/p>\n
Cama president, John Kapito, argues that the inflation basket that Malawi is currently using is not a true reflection of people\u2019s buying patterns and he said the CPI also leaves out important variables which have a huge bearing when measuring inflation.<\/p>\n
Malawi\u2019s inflation figures have remained comparatively high, at times even peaking above all the other countries in the Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa (Comesa).<\/p>\n
Kapito was commenting on the recent developments where inflation was seen rising in May after months of deceleration, pushing food prices up.<\/p>\n
Ironically, food prices started to rise barely two months after harvest, influencing the headline inflation to inch up by 0.6 percentage points from 20.9 percent in April to 21.5 percent.<\/p>\n
According to Kapito, the \u201cdramatic changes in inflation\u201d is a result of miscalculation and misappropriation of needs in the inflation basket.<\/p>\n
\u201cOur inflation basket is all wrong because it has not changed at all in regard to the inputs or variable that makes the basket. 60 percent of the basket is loaded with maize and petroleum product prices. But the rest that are making sense to all of us are not in that basket,\u201d worried Kapito.<\/p>\n
He said the figures do not give a true reflection of the situation on the ground. He added that most Malawians remain in dire poverty with buying power continuing to be eroded.<\/p>\n
He further blamed the inflation crisis on huge appetite for borrowing among those in authority.<\/p>\n
\u201cMost of the challenges we have that are impacting on inflation and cost of living are influenced by the government\u2019s appetite for borrowing and spending. Due to this our figures on inflation will keep on rising,\u201d warned Kapito.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The Consumers Association of Malawi (Cama) has joined calls asking for the revision of the basket of goods and services used to measure inflation suggesting that such a move would make the consumer price index (CPI) more relevant and accurate. Cama president, John Kapito, argues that the inflation basket that Malawi is currently using is […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":27687,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-27683","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27683","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=27683"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27683\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":27688,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27683\/revisions\/27688"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/27687"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=27683"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=27683"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=27683"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}