1. Consumer Price Index
Consumer Price Index (CPI) is an index of the prices of consumer goods and services purchased by the consumers. It is used to measure the rate of inflation or the cost of living. CPI for Afghanistan is a weighted average of the CPIs for Kabul, Herat, Kandahar, Jalalabad, Mazar-e-Sharif and Khost. The weights used in the index for food and non-food items are 60.6% and 39.4%, respectively. March 2004 is the base-period used.
National CPI in the last one-year period (December 2004 to November 2005) rose by about 11 percent points.(1) The annual increases in the national food and non-food indexes were 10.3 and 11.6 percent points, respectively. The exchange-rate Index rose only by 4 percent-points in the above one-year period, especially after its record 6.3 percent point drop in November. (Graph below and Annex I)
Note:
(1) Source: Central Statistics Office (CSO)