DOHA: The household spending pattern is changing in Qatar, thanks to the increasing purchasing power amid gas-fuelled prosperity.
People are spending more on ‘recreation and culture’ compared to previous years, as is characteristic of a consumerist society.
It (recreation and culture) includes leisure travel overseas by Qatari and non-Qatari families and seems to have emerged as a major head of expenditure.
Eating out is becoming a fashion and that has prompted planning officials to carve out a separate head in the Consumer Price Index (CPI) basket. CPI measures changes in the prices of goods and services to track consumer price inflation.
The weight of items has been readjusted in the new basket and the items have been increased from 128 to 228 and so is the number of heads of expenditure from eight to 12. A new series of CPI with base year 2013 will be published from this January, the Ministry of Development Planning and Statistics said. The January CPI data will be released this month.
The ministry said CPI is rebased every five years to reflect latest pattern and composition of goods and services.
A Household Expenditure and Income Survey by the ministry is the prime source to update CPI, the ministry said in the 10th issue of Window on Economic Statistics of Qatar for the third quarter of 2014. The survey was held between September 2012 and September 2013 and results were published last June.
The weights of heads of family expenditure like food, rent, recreation, education and health in the new basket have been readjusted to reflect the relative importance of each item as proportion of total expenses.
In the new basket, the weight of ‘rent, fuel and energy’ has been lowered to 21.9 percent from 32.1. The new head is now ‘Housing, water, electricity, gas and other fuels’. The weight of ‘recreation and culture’ has gone up in the new basket to 12.7 percent from 4.1.
Transport and communications are now separate heads. The weight of transport in the new basket is the second largest after rent, at 15 percent.
Restaurants and hotels that were part of ‘miscellaneous goods and services’ in the earlier basket are a separate head of expenditure and carry a weight of 6.1 percent compared to 3.7 previously.
The rental component of the basket used to previously include an amount representing an assumed value for the owner-occupied housing units.
In the new basket, this value has been removed so that the rental component covers only the actual expenditure incurred on rents.
A large number of products have been removed from the new basket, including carbonated and mineral water, radio sets and recorders, motorcycles and heaters.The Peninsula
