We won’t deal with value of shilling: NBS

The National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) has removed the currency purchasing power parity (PPP) element on its monthly Consumer Price Index (CPI) reports.

The removal of the data follows the bad experiences on misinterpretations of the local currency value by politicians and media (not The Citizen).

The currency purchasing power (CPP) is the measurement that determines the value of goods and services the shilling could buy at different period of time.

“Sometimes when people see in the CPI report that the currency purchasing power has decreased, they usually perceive that the currency value has dropped, which are two different things,” said Mr Ephraim Kwesigabo, the NBS director of price and population statistics.

Mr Kwesigabo said because the currency issue is being managed by the central bank (BoT), they have decided to remove it from the monthly CPI data.

Therefore, the issues of currency purchasing power will now be reported by the central bank, although Mr Kwesigabo did not specify whether it will be reported through the Monetary Policy Statement (MPS) and the Monthly Economic Review (MER).

“There are people with little knowledge on the currency and monetary issues, so sometime they misinterpret the numbers that are published.

This sometime distorts the actual interpretation of the situation,” He said.

The Tanzania currency purchasing power last evaluation was held on December 2015 at the unit of Sh100 of which it fell to Sh92.18 in September 2017.