Workshop on price survey opens

– A workshop to train field supervisors and price data collectors, on an International Comparison Programme (ICP), which is to collect prices of commodities, opened on Wednesday, at Pokuase, in the Ga West District of the Greater Accra Region.

     The ICP is a worldwide project, which will enable economists to compare the average wealth of all the 150 participating countries, based on prices.

     The three-day training workshop, which has brought 48 participants from the southern sector of the country, would educate them on product specification, price collection, retail outlets, product identifications and typical problems in price collection, among others.

     Dr Grace Bediako, Government Statistician, in her welcoming remarks said, it was a global project intended to compare countries across the world, using Purchasing Power Parties (PPP), instead of the Gross Domestic Products (GDP).

     “The data would also be used to compare the economic structures relative to other countries and to know which sector of the economy was doing well in the country,” Dr Bediako added.

     She said the Programme was time-bound, which would last for 12 months, adding that, the World Bank was coordinating the project with support from the African Development Bank.

     Dr Bediako urged the participants to be careful in data collection, saying any mistake made would cause the government a huge fortune.

     She also called on all market women, shop owners and shop attendants to help in the collection of proper information.

     Mr Edward Asuo Afram, Head of the Price Team of the Ghana Statistical Service, explained that prices would be collected from department stores, supermarkets and hypermarkets, wholesale stores and discount shops, mobile shops and street vendors, private service enterprises, public service enterprises, among other kinds of traders.

     He said under the ICP, there was a long list of carefully selected products, each of them precisely defined and described.

     Mr Afram urged the participants to be careful not to substitute different products for those on the target list, saying the ICP was also concerned about comparing prices of identical products in different countries.

     He asked all supervisors to cross-check all the data collected before the full submission to the Service.