Food and Agriculture Organization

The FAOSTAT monthly CPI Food CPI database was based on the ILO CPI data until December 2014. In 2014, IMF-ILO-FAO agreed to transfer global CPI data compilation from ILO to IMF. Upon agreement, CPIs for all items and its sub components originates from the International Monetary Fund (IMF), and the UN Statistics Division(UNSD) for countries not covered by the IMF. However, due to a limited time coverage from IMF and UNSD for a number of countries, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), the Latin America and the Caribbean statistics (CEPALSTAT), Central Bank of Western African States (BCEAO), Eastern Caribbean Central Bank (ECCB) and national statistical office website data are used for missing historical data from IMF and UNSD food CPI. The FAO CPI dataset for all items(or general CPI) and the Food CPI, consists of a complete and consistent set of time series from January 2000 onwards. These indices measure the price change between the current and reference periods of the average basket of goods and services purchased by households. The CPI,all items is typically used to measure and monitor inflation, set monetary policy targets, index social benefits such as pensions and unemployment benefits, and to escalate thresholds and credits in the income tax systems and wages in public and private wage contracts.

Data are collected directly from countries using a FAO questionnaire, which was developed in partnership with the International Monetary Fund, as the IMF collects global data on government expenditures and is the international organization responsible for developing guidelines on the Classification of Functions of Government (COFOG). The FAO questionnaire obtains additional detail relevant to Agriculture and Rural Development not available from the IMF questionnaire. The FAO dataset consists of a time series, from 2000 onwards, of government expenditures in terms of expenditures in: (1) Total; (2) Economic affairs; (3) Agriculture, Forestry, Fishing and Hunting, along with its three disaggregated subsectors of Agriculture, Forestry and Fishing; and 4) Environmental Protection. In addition, expenditures in each detailed function are further disaggregated into recurrent and capital expenditures, the latter of which serves as a proxy for expenditures in investment goods. Additional indicators include the total share of government expenditures allocated to agriculture, and an agriculture orientation index (ratio of the total share of government expenditures to agriculture, over the total share of GDP from agricultural value-added). Though the goal is to have complete and consistent coverage for all countries, relatively low response rates for this new domain and country level differences in data collection and reporting creates some challenges in providing a complete and consistent global dataset.