The government has sought extension from the World Bank (WB) in the project designed to help Pakistan Bureau of Statistics (PBS) in rebasing of CPI as well as improving sampling for the Households Intergraded Economic Survey. Sources in the Finance Ministry said the main reason behind seeking extension as the implementation of the project is unlikely to be completed within due data of end December 2016.
When contacted, Chief Statistician Pakistan Bureau of Statistics said, "we have requested for extension in grant for reporting of CPI and HIES. Bajwa added that it is a grant of 0.14 million for capacity building of the PBS. The WB approved the project on September 18, 2015 with original closing date of end-December 2016 to help the PBS in re-basing of the CPI, improving sampling for the HIES as well as Population and Agricultural Censuses.
Sources added that there were two components for rebasing of the CPI and first part involved updating the CPI by using a more comprehensive income and expenditure survey - Household Income and Consumption Survey (HICS). The HICS was implemented from July 2015 to June 2016 and the data is now being prepared by the PBS to be shared with the team.
The second part of the rebasing exercise involves the inclusion of rural price data collection to be incorporated into the national CPI. As for the prices are concerned, the WB team discussions with the PBS are underway for a pilot project with respect to collecting price data in both rural and urban regions to get at a more representative CPI for the country.
The PBS was also provided technical training for the population census; however, due to internal problems and certain disagreements at the provincial level, the census was delayed. As the census was supposed to start in March 2016, most of the time between December 2015 and June 2016 was taken up in planning and possibly fielding the population census. The delay in census shifted the PBS focus back to the HIES survey and collection of price data used in the CPI. The team is now in discussions with the PBS to improve the HIES consumption module, with particular emphasis on capturing food consumed away from home more adequately.