The Ministry of Development Planning & Statistics (MDPS) has released the Machinery & Equipment Price Index (MEPI) for the First Half of 2017, Which reached 101.8 points.
Machinery & Equipment Price Index is one of the indices issued by the ministry. The year 2013 was selected as the base year instead of 2012. New goods and groups were added; 9 groups instead of 4 groups in the previous basket.
The details of the general index of MEPI for the first half of 2017 show that six groups recorded higher index than the general index (101.8%). The six groups are as follows: the musical instruments with 102.9%, metal machinery and tools with 102.8%, General-purpose machines (including pumps) with 102%, Special-purpose machines (including agricultural equipment and Mining and quarrying machinery) with 102%, electrical devices and appliances (including generators and transformers ) with 103%, and finally transport equipment (including vehicles and boats) with 102.8%.
The three groups, which indices were lower than the general index (101.8%), are the group of “Office, Accounting and Computing machinery with 99.8%, the group of "Radio, television and communication equipment and apparatus with 100.4%, and finally the group of "Medical devices and optical instruments, with 100.6%.
Graph(1) and Table (1) show the Machinery & Equipment Price Index for the First half of year 2017,
Starting from this half, This indicator has been updated, to contribute with other statistical indicators to studying and analyzing the economic level of the state. This index aims to measure of the average change in the selling prices of machinery and equipment, which are categorized as capital goods, by selecting a given basket of goods and monitoring their prices over subsequent periods of time with respect to that in a previous and fixed period called the base period. International standards are taken into account and followed in the collection, calculation and dissemination of this index in line with the requirements of the System of National Accounts.
In order to calculate the Machinery & Equipment Price Index, the Central Product Classification version 2 (CPC Ver.2) is used to classify subgroups from level 1 to level 5.
The data of machinery and equipment prices are collected from key and specified sources so as to be comparable for different periods of time. They are collected on a semi-annual basis in March and September of each year. On average, 188 quotations are collected from a sample that includes 80 establishments. All data are collected through direct contact or electronic collection from different sources.
The base year has been changed to 2013 instead of 2012 in the calculation of this index so as to be compared to the subsequent periods. This year is also the base year for calculating the other indices issued by the Ministry, as well as being the reference year in estimates of GDP at constant prices, and also the reference year in national accounts data. In the calculation of the weights involved in the composition of the index (relative importance), the value of imports of the selected goods was used (given the fact that all the machinery and equipment in the basket are imported) by the ratio of the total value of the imports of the goods basket.
It is worth mentioning that the Machinery and Equipment Price Index was issued for the first time in 2014 for a relatively limited basket of goods for the base-year 2012. In this updated issue, new goods and groups were added.
This press release includes a report on the Machinery and Equipment Prices Index for the first half of 2017 that is updated to have 2013 as the base year.
Graph (2) shows the series of Machinery and Equipment Prices Indices as of the first half of 2014 to the first half of 2017 at the general index level.
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