Last week, parliamentarians from the Vos bench in Congress questioned the data provided by the new methodology to calculate the Consumer Price Index (CPI), as well as the type of products that make up the new basic food basket (CBA) with based on calorie counts because at their discretion, not only nutritious foods are included but also some that are harmful to health.
The number of products on which the calculation for the CBA is made rose from 44 last year to 66 (urban) and 60 for rural. In addition, the suggested grams to cover the energy requirements of a household of 4.16 members in the urban area and 2,172 calories for a household of 4.80 members in the rural area were established at 2,052 grams.
Asked regarding these questions, Jorge Benavides, economic analyst at the Foundation for the Development of Guatemala (Fundesa), who has participated in the discussion of the new INE CBA methodology, explained that the Cepal methodology was implemented for the calculations. while the caloric requirement is based on information from the Nutrition Institute of Central America and Panama (Incap).
“We are not looking at how much it costs what people eat, but rather how much it costs a mixture of foods that would allow people to satisfy their calorie needs according to Incap,” he explained, indicating that Guatemala was one of the 4 countries in Latin America. without implementing that model.
He stated that the changes in the average costs of the CBA, which lead to variations in the expanded basket, are due to the fact that the measurement of food was better defined and is no longer comparable with that of 2023.
In the last six years, methodological adjustments have been carried out (2017, 2020 and 2023) to eliminate inconsistencies that were included in the 2008 methodology, which caused disparity compared to other countries.
“The current CBA is not a recommendation of what to consume, but rather the National Household Income and Expenditure Survey (Enigh), updated in 2022-2023, collects what people buy in their homes. What it does establish as a suggestion is how many calories a person should consume per day.”
For this, the physical activity of the people in the reference population was considered. For example, in urban areas life is a little more sedentary and fewer calories are consumed than in rural areas, where there is more physical activity and almost 6% more daily calories are consumed.
According to Benavides, with Cepal’s methodology we must also see what people eat and the appropriate proportions at the macronutrient level; That is, carbohydrates cannot be more than 40% of the diet and at least 30% must be proteins.
“So, the requirements are defined at the macronutrient level and we adapt that with what people actually reported that they consume.” From this it follows that in the urban area 66 reference products are used and in the rural area 60 were used. And with these it is regarding calculating the mix of these products for a month of food for a family and the quantities that should be purchased. ”.
Another question has been why products such as what are popularly called instant glass soups were included, if they do not have nutrients and harm health. In this case, the analyst partially agrees because “they are not nutritious foods and are considered very expensive empty calories that do not contribute anything to the body and are expensive,” but they are part of people’s consumption pattern.
To compile prices, the INE consults 13,330 sources that quote more than 60,000 prices. In addition, to calculate the expanded basket, what percentage of total consumption is not food is reviewed, such as recreation, health, education, clothing and appliances, based on the Enigh.
“When applying certain calculations, it appears that in the urban area, a third of what people consume is food and two thirds are goods and services, but they do not go into detail to quantify how much they cost, which helps to avoid problems in the calculation of purchases that are not routine.”
“Surprising values”
Juan Pablo Pira, internal consultant of the Association for Research and Social Studies (Asies), said that thanks to the construction of the new basic basket there is now a lot of openness and the INE reports make the methodology quite clear, apart from the fact that the choice of products is not a recommendation, but a reflection of what people are eating, so it is a description.
“For something to enter the basic basket it has to provide a certain number of calories and be consumed by more than 85% of the population, as was reflected in the Ine household surveys,” he added.
“In some cases the value may seem somewhat surprising to us” but the INE has a list of products and reviews them in different establishments throughout the country, which has its own way of weighting to put what can be said ‘average’ and therefore “That’s why the number that comes out can be slightly confusing,” he added.
Derived from the monthly data of the basic food basket as of April, the daily cost for a person in the urban area is Q28 and in the rural area, Q22. “People comment that the INE says that a person can eat with Q28 a day, but it is not exactly that, but rather the entity says that with that value they might meet the 2000 calories they require in the day. “But I’m not telling him that he’s going to eat well. That is, one can consume calories that are not necessarily nutritious. The Q28 or Q23 that come out in some cases does not mean that I can eat with those Q23.”
So, in his opinion, these amounts do not indicate that the INE is saying that the products are cheap, but rather that “the typical Guatemalan spends very little because he has very little,” so there is a problem in the way it has been read. Therefore, he recommended that the INE socialize the way in which the tables of products and quantities should be read, “because that is where the criticism comes from.”
When asked regarding the new methodology to calculate the basic basket, he said that if the data from the survey is taken and the basket is tried to be reproduced, the data generated by the INE does not always appear because the entity has made decisions in certain aspects, such as discarding prices that are extraordinarily low or calculated with erroneous formulas.
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