Stats SA will, from January 2009, include some IT prices and fees in the basket of goods and services it uses to determine the country's inflation rate.
Stats SA Consumer Price Index executive manager Patrick Kelly says Internet service provider (ISP) fees, as well as laptop and printer prices, will be monitored from January.
Kelly says Stats SA routinely conducts and consults research that shows what South African households typically spend their money on. Typical IT items are now being included in the basket because they have become ubiquitous.
Stats SA employs two criteria to select products and services for the CPI basket, he says. The first is the total expenditure on an item, and the second is the number of households that purchased the product.
The combination of these two approaches serves to exclude any luxury items that may record high expenditure because they are expensive, but are bought exclusively by a small minority of households.
"Other items affected by technology change are CDs and DVDs, rather than audio tapes and VHS cassettes, and including DSTV subscriptions rather than MNet," Kelly adds.
He says the weightings to be attached to laptops and ISP fees have not yet been released into the public domain. He expects it to be published later this year.
Explaining the choice of laptops over desktops, Kelly notes laptops are good substitutes for desktops, which are often "made to order" and, therefore, difficult to consistently price. Laptops are more standardised and easier to price over a period.
A different logic is applied to ISP fees, which will be included in the telephone and telefax category. "ISP fees will make up only a small part of this category, but we think it has a different pricing dynamic and should therefore be included."
Kelly says Stats SA will begin tracking pricing this January, but only including laptops and ISP fees in the inflation basket from January 2009. "This will allow us to make year-on-year comparisons."
His comments come a day after Stats SA released its latest inflation figures that showed prices were still increasing by more than the 6% per month, year-on-year, that the SA Reserve Bank judged healthy for sustainable economic growth.
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