Tradables and Non-Tradables components of the CPI

Tradables and Non-Tradables components of the CPI

19 January 2005

Statistics New Zealand (SNZ) is now publishing official tradables and non-tradables price indices. These new official series are available for the period back to June quarter 1999.

SNZ's methodology provides a rigorous classification of the CPI regimen into tradables and non-tradables components. The Bank will thus replace its existing tradables and non-tradables indices with SNZ's new indices, and cease calculating its own measures.

The Bank will also revise its own tradables and non-tradables indices over the historical period between December quarter 1988 and March quarter 1999, to be consistent with the new SNZ series. These revised series will provide users with consistent historical time series. The revised historical series will be made available to users ahead of the upcoming March Monetary Policy Statement.

The intended historical revisions are required because of some minor differences between the SNZ and Reserve Bank classifications. In particular, the Bank has classified 'cigarettes and tobacco' and 'alcoholic drinks' items as tradables, whereas SNZ classifies the majority of these items as non-tradables. However, some alcoholic drinks consumed off license premises, such as wine, spirits and liqueurs, remains part of the tradables index in SNZ's classification.

The Bank considers the differences between the classifications to be minor and have no implications for current monetary policy settings.

SNZ's information paper "Consumers Price Index Tradable and Non-tradable Series" provides more details on the tradables and non-tradables classification www.stats.govt.nz

ENDS

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