Technical Expert Group for Updating the Manual on Export and Import Price Indices (TEG-XMPI) Terms of Reference

Technical Expert Group for Updating the Manual on Export and Import Price Indices (TEG-XMPI)
Members

Revision of the International Labour Organization Manual on the CPI

Revision of the United Nations Manual on the PPI

See Also:
IMF Statistical Topics


Electronic Discussion Group:
Developing a Revised Manual for the Export and
Import Price Indices

Last Updated: March 08, 2010
The information on this page is dated. Please check the up-to-date version here.

This website provides a revised draft of the new Export and Import Price Index Manual. The revised product is the work of the authors and editor and is in the process of being reviewed by the Inter-secretariat Working Group on Price Indices (IWGPS). The authors and editor of the draft chapters on this site bear the sole responsibility for both the substance and the style of the contents. As such, the views expressed in the draft chapters are not to be attributed to the IMF.

The Technical Expert Groups on the Producer Price Index (TEG-PPI) the Consumer Price Index (TEG-CPI), and the Export and Import Price Indices (TEG-XMPI) were formed under the aegis of the IWGPS to produce Manuals on international best practice in compiling producer, consumer, and international trade price statistics, respectively. (More background information on the IWGPS can be found at Revision of the International Labour Organization (ILO) Manual on CPI). The ILO has served as secretariat of the IWGPS since the Working Group's inception in September 1998. In December 2003 the IWGPS designated the IMF as coordinating agency for the Export and Import Price Index Manual. The IMF assumed the secretariat of the IWGPS in April 2004, passed to the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe in March 2007.

This Manual is designed with consistent structure, terminology, and notation, wherever appropriate, to the CPI and PPI Manuals of the IWGPS. A draft version of the XMPI Manual was completed in 2006. This initial draft XMPI Manual was adapted from the PPI Manual (by IMF staff and a few other specialists) and posted on this web site. The Statistics Department of the IMF wrote in 2006 to each national statistical office and other interested organizations, including the OECD and WTO, requesting comments on the draft chapters. As a further part of the XMPI Manual review process a seminar on the draft manual was held in Washington D.C. during September 25–29, 2006. Participants included a focus group of compilers from selected national statistical offices and experts in the field that included many IWGPS members. Following the seminar written comments on each chapter were sent to the originating PPI authors who were asked to update the current versions of their chapters. Further reviews were sought and obtained as relevant. Helpful comments were also received by the UNSD and WTO.


The table of contents of the Manual is listed below along with revised draft chapters as of April 2008:
space
Chapter Title
  Foreword
  Preface
  Reader's guide
  1 A summary of export and import price index methodology
  2 Unit value indices
  3 The price and volume of foreign trade: background, purpose, and uses of export and import price indices
  4 Valuation, timing, coverage, and classification
  5 Data sources
  6 Sampling issues in price collection
  7 Price collection
    Annex 1
    Annex 2
    Annex 3
  8 Treatment of quality change
  9 Item substitution, sample space and new goods
10 An overview of XMPI calculation
11 Treatment of specific products
12 Errors and bias in XMPIs
13 Organization and management
14 Publication, dissemination and user relations
15 The system of price statistics
16 Basic index number theory
17 Axiomatic and stochastic approach
18 Economic approach
19 Transfer pricing
20 Exports and imports from production and expenditure approaches and associated price indices using an artificial data set
21 Elementary indices
22 Quality change and hedonics
23 Treatment of seasonal products