Household budget survey begins today

KATHMANDU, Feb 13:

In a bid to revise weighting factors for the National Consumers Price Index, Nepal Rastra Bank (NRB) is kick-starting the 5th Household Budget Program from Thursday.

The central bank has been conducting such survey every 10 years. The last survey was conducted on 2005/2006.

The survey takes into account the level and sources of income, expenditure patterns of households and other things. The chief objective of the survey is to revise weighting factors for the Consumer Price Index (CPI) and to prepare a representative CPI that captures the overall price situation of the country.

“Consuming pattern of households changes due to various factors. That is why NRB has been conducting household budget survey in the interval of 10 years to find how people spend and earn,” NRB deputy governor Gopal Prasad Kaphle told Republica. “Once the survey is done, the weighing factors for the CPI are also revised. The revised weighting factors of the CPI can only give the real picture of the inflation.”

NRB had planned to start the survey in mid-November last year. But the central bank postponed the survey to February due to the Constituent Assembly polls.
Altogether 84 market centers from 55 districts in the five development regions will covered in the survey. A sample of 8,028 households has been selected for the survey.

NRB has appointed teachers of community schools as surveyors to collect the data. The surveyors will collect data from the households regularly on weekly basis and send it to the NRB every month for a year.

Source: Republica