So excitement!
For years, the ABS (Australian Bureau of Statistics) hasn't produced a monthly CPI estimate. Governments in power from both large parties, don't much care about statistics, except the population census, which shows them how constituencies will shift, so they've starved the ABS of funds to do proper statistics. Quite how you are to manage an economy and a society without data, they've never explained.
But somehow, the ABS has found additional resources to create a monthly CPI index. A private sector calculation used to be done, which was close-ish but not exact. The new ABS calculation contains 75% of the time series which go into the quarterly series. In any event, several components of the CPI are annual, and many are quarterly, so they will be estimating/interpolating some components of the new monthly series, which means it will be subject to some revision.
A monthly CPI series will allow me to estimate the volume of monthly retail sales, which will allow me to estimate a monthly GDP series. Now, if only the ABS could squeeze some cash out of the politicians to fund a monthly industrial production series. In the meantime, I'll estimate a monthly index using the Chow-Lin technique and whatever monthly IP indicators I can find. I'll keep you posted.
Ignoring the jump caused by the introduction of GST (general sales tax), inflation hasn't been this high since the 1990s. Does that mean the RBA (Reserve Bank of Australia) will go on raising interest rates, or not? I'll be doing a piece on this, too, in the next couple of days.
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