> ## Content Index > Fetch the complete content index at: https://www.lacaribenanews.com/llms.txt > Use this file to discover other available public pages before exploring further. # Guyana's Inflation Basket Comes From a 2006 Survey. The One Meant to Replace It Was Finished in 2019. - URL: https://www.lacaribenanews.com/guyana-inflation-cpi-basket-2006-survey-imf-prices-rating-c-2026/ - Published: 2026-11-01T11:39:01.000Z - Updated: 2026-11-01T12:14:06.000Z - Description: Guyana measures inflation against a basket chosen after a 2006 household survey. The Bureau of Statistics finished field work on the survey meant to replace it in November 2019. The IMF called for the switch in 2025 and found progress slow. - Author: Theon Alleyne - Tags: Guyana, Inflation, Statistics, IMF, Business **Quick summary:** Guyana measures inflation against a basket chosen after a 2006 household survey. The Bureau of Statistics finished field work on the survey meant to replace it in November 2019\. The index is still built on the older list. The IMF called for the switch in 2025 and found progress slow. Georgetown inflation ran at 3.4 per cent to September 2026. By LCN Business Desk Every official statement about the cost of living in Guyana rests on one list of goods. What is on that list, and how heavily each item counts, decides what the country's inflation rate is. The list was drawn up after a household survey finished in 2006, three years before the current index series began and thirteen before the first barrel of Guyanese oil was lifted. A newer survey exists. The Guyana Bureau of Statistics ran it across all ten administrative regions from November 2018, finished the field work in November 2019, and gives as its second stated objective the revision of the basket and of the weighting patterns behind the index. **Almost seven years on, the index is still built on the older list.** The International Monetary Fund has already told the government to make the switch, graded the country's price statistics **C**, and recorded that progress on its recommendation had been slow. ## When was Guyana's inflation basket chosen? After a Household Budget Survey completed in 2006, and the Bureau says so on its own page. > The items which make up the baskets used by the Bureau of Statistics were selected after the completion of a Household Budget Survey (HBS) in 2006. The series now published began in 2010\. The Bureau's historical table records that "the basket was re-based and new series commenced in 2010", and the index has run continuously on that footing since, set to 100 at December 2009\. It has been re-based once in thirty years. Coverage is in the name. The headline series is the Georgetown Consumer Price Index. A second series, the All Urban Consumer Price Index, reaches the six towns surveyed in that 2005/2006 exercise: Anna Regina, New Amsterdam, Corriverton, Rosehall, Linden and Georgetown. The Bureau publishes no rural index at all, and the four towns the re-basing is meant to add, Bartica, Lethem, Mabaruma and Mahdia, enter the statistics only when it happens. ## Why does the age of the basket matter? Because an index built on a fixed list prices what a household bought then, and Guyana's households do not spend the way they did before the oil economy. An index of this kind prices a fixed list of goods and weights each one by its share of household spending. Both the list and the shares come from a household budget survey. When that survey is twenty years old, the index answers a narrower question than the one put to it: not what has happened to the cost of living, but what it costs today to buy what a 2006 household bought. Three things move underneath a frozen list. Spending shares shift as incomes rise, with food taking a smaller slice and housing, transport and services taking more. Goods and services appear that the survey never recorded, so nothing in the basket prices them. And households substitute away from whatever has grown expensive, which a fixed list does not allow them to do. The structure of the Georgetown series shows its age without any need to see the weights. Its nine categories bundle communication together with transport, so the index cannot report what a household pays for connectivity on its own, and it carries no separate line for eating out. The All Urban series, classified on the newer COICOP standard, separates both. None of that establishes a direction, and the published record cannot settle one. Over-weighting food, which has risen fastest of anything in the basket, would push the measured rate up. A shelter component that does not follow what tenants pay would push it down, and LCN has reported that the housing line in this index [has not risen above its 2009 base in any reading the Bureau publishes](https://www.lacaribenanews.com/guyana-housing-index-below-2009-base-food-doubled-georgetown-cpi-2026/). Which effect is the larger cannot be read off the releases, because the weights that would settle it are not published. An old basket makes the number less reliable rather than reliably too low. ## Can anyone outside the Bureau check the number? Not from what is published. The index levels and the rates are there. Nothing that would let a reader rebuild them is. | The Bureau publishes | It does not publish | | ----------------------------------------------------------- | ------------------------------------------------------------- | | Monthly index levels for Georgetown, across nine categories | The weight of any category in the basket | | The twelve-month and the period-average rates | What sits inside any category | | An annual series of rates and year-end levels back to 1994 | Any methodology document for the index | | All Urban index levels for six towns, to June 2026 | A twelve-month rate, or any town breakdown, for that series | | The 2018 survey questionnaire | Any household budget survey report, for 2018 or for 2005/2006 | \*Drawn from the Bureau's price-indices page, its monthly releases, its historical series, its surveys page and its publications library. The Fund's 2025 staff report and the Ministry's Mid-Year Report carry no weights either.\* A weight is what turns a shelf of prices into a single number. **Without them the published series can be read but not rebuilt**, so a firm has no way to test the headline against its own cost base, or to say how much of any of the [six official rates now in circulation](https://www.lacaribenanews.com/guyana-six-official-inflation-rates-which-one-business-should-use-2026/) is food and how much is shelter. ## What did the IMF tell the government to do? Update the base year on the surveys already collected. It graded the statistics C and recorded that the work had not moved. Annex VIII of the [2025 Article IV staff report](https://www.imf.org/-/media/files/publications/cr/2025/english/1guyea2025001-print-pdf.pdf?ref=lacaribenanews.com) carries a data adequacy assessment. Guyana's overall rating is B. Of the six sectors scored, four are B and two are C: national accounts, and prices. On the detailed breakdown, the coverage of price statistics is also C, while frequency and timeliness is B. The Fund defines C as data with "some shortcomings that somewhat hamper surveillance". Its stated reason names the instrument: "immediate enhancements are needed to the National Accounts and CPI statistics, in particular to improve the compilation of GDP, treatment of oil production, CPI coverage and breakdown and to update the National Accounts and CPI base year, including using the available recent surveys and other relevant data sources." It then names the survey. Missions by the Caribbean Regional Technical Assistance Centre (CARTAC), [the IMF's Caribbean centre in Barbados](https://www.lacaribenanews.com/langrin-cartac-route-bank-of-jamaica-governor-2026/), included one "recommending to update the CPI at a two-digit COICOP level using the most recent Household Budget Survey in 2018/19". The annex adds: "Progress on following up and implementing these recommendations has however been slow." Under changes since the previous consultation it records: "No relevant changes since last Article IV Consultation." A year on, the same items were still on the list. When the Executive Board concluded Guyana's 2026 Article IV consultation on 8 October 2026, a consultation LCN reported was [signed off without meeting to discuss it](https://www.lacaribenanews.com/guyana-imf-article-iv-2026-lapse-of-time-cost-oil-audits/), the [Fund's statement](https://www.imf.org/en/news/articles/2026/10/08/pr26330-guyana-article-iv?ref=lacaribenanews.com) welcomed "continued efforts to strengthen official statistics" and set out what remains. Updating national accounts and price statistics is on that list, and so is rolling out a new household budget survey. The grading is better read as a judgement on timeliness of reform than on arithmetic. Frequency and timeliness score B, and the September release appeared within weeks of the month it covers. The C sits on coverage and base year. Ramesh Gampat, a former economist at the United Nations Development Programme, reached the same subject from the other direction. In a paper for the [Guyana Business Journal](https://guyanabusinessjournal.com/2026/10/guyana-oil-economy-structural-challenges-policy-responses-2020-2026/?ref=lacaribenanews.com) published on 24 October, he writes that "the index covers urban areas only and rests on an outdated basket", and that measured inflation "is heavily contested". He describes his own evidence for understatement as anecdotal, drawn from food, rents, building materials and services. He was reported by [Kaieteur News](https://kaieteurnewsonline.com/2026/10/29/economist-warns-guyanas-inflation-may-be-worse-than-official-figures-suggest/?ref=lacaribenanews.com) on 29 October. ## What happens when it is finally re-based? The reported rate moves, the comparison with earlier years breaks, and nothing published says when. The Bureau's survey page is specific about both the timing and the purpose. The survey began in November 2018 and ran quarterly, and "the field work for the last quarter was completed in November 2019". The second of its two stated objectives is "to revise the list of goods and services in the household's consumption 'basket', and consequently the weighting patterns of the CPI". The case for replacing the basket and its weights is the Bureau's own. What has not followed is a report. The survey page offers the 2018 questionnaire and no findings, and the publications library lists no household budget survey for 2018 or for 2005/2006, so neither the basket in use nor the one meant to replace it has a published survey behind it. No date, target or timetable for the re-basing appears anywhere on the Bureau's pages. Two things follow for anyone planning against it. The current series runs continuously on the December 2009 base, so a re-based index will not be comparable with what came before unless the Bureau bridges the two. And the 2018/19 survey, whenever it is applied, predates both the pandemic and the fastest years of the oil expansion, so it would replace a twenty-year-old picture of household spending with a seven-year-old one. The Fund's October statement asks for a new household budget survey to be rolled out, which is a longer road again than applying the one already collected. Until then, every official figure about the cost of living in Guyana is an answer to a question a few thousand households were asked in 2006. ### The entities - **Guyana Bureau of Statistics** is the national statistical office, which compiles and publishes the Georgetown Consumer Price Index monthly and the All Urban Consumer Price Index periodically. - **Georgetown Consumer Price Index** is Guyana's headline price measure, covering the capital and set to 100 at December 2009. - **All Urban Consumer Price Index** is the Bureau's six-town series, classified on the Classification of Individual Consumption by Purpose (COICOP). - **Household Budget Survey** is the household spending survey from which the basket of priced items is drawn; the one behind the current basket was completed in 2006, and a Household Budget Survey/Survey of Living Conditions ran from November 2018 to November 2019. - **International Monetary Fund (IMF)** published the 2025 Article IV staff report for Guyana, whose Annex VIII carries the data adequacy assessment. - **Caribbean Regional Technical Assistance Centre (CARTAC)** is the IMF-hosted regional centre whose technical assistance missions recommended updating the index on the 2018/19 survey. - **Ramesh Gampat** is a former economist at the United Nations Development Programme and the author of the October 2026 Guyana Business Journal paper on Guyana's oil economy. ### What the title card says - Headline: Guyana's inflation basket comes from a 2006 survey, and the one meant to replace it was finished in 2019. - Basket items selected after a Household Budget Survey completed in 2006\. Source: Bureau of Statistics price-indices page. - Replacement survey: ran November 2018 to November 2019 across all ten administrative regions, with no re-basing date published. Source: Bureau of Statistics surveys page. - IMF data adequacy assessment, 2025 Article IV, Annex VIII: prices C, national accounts C, overall B. Source: IMF Country Report. - IMF on its own recommendation: progress on following up and implementing it has been slow. Source: the same annex. - Georgetown Consumer Price Index, September 2026: 153.19, up 3.4 per cent over twelve months. Source: Bureau of Statistics. - Index base: December 2009 = 100, with the series re-based once, in 2010\. Source: Bureau of Statistics. ## Frequently Asked Questions How old is the basket used to measure Guyanese inflation? The Bureau of Statistics says the items in the basket were selected after a Household Budget Survey completed in 2006, and does not publish the weights applied to them. The index prices a fixed list weighted to the spending pattern of that year, which in Guyana was thirteen years before first oil. Did Guyana run a newer household budget survey? Yes. The Bureau ran a Household Budget and Living Condition Survey across all ten administrative regions from November 2018, and its survey page states that field work on the last quarter was completed in November 2019\. Its second stated objective was to revise the basket and the weighting patterns of the Consumer Price Index. No re-basing date has been published. What did the IMF say about the quality of Guyana's price statistics? Annex VIII of the 2025 Article IV staff report rates price statistics and national accounts C, within an overall rating of B. C denotes data with "some shortcomings that somewhat hamper surveillance". The Fund called for an updated base year, noted that CARTAC had recommended using the 2018/19 survey, and said progress "has however been slow". Are the weights behind Guyana's Consumer Price Index published? Not on the Bureau's price-indices page, in its monthly releases, in its historical series or in its publications library, which carries no methodology document for the index. The Fund's 2025 staff report and the Ministry of Finance's Mid-Year Report do not give them either. Does Guyana publish an inflation rate for areas outside Georgetown? Only partly. The All Urban Consumer Price Index covers six towns and its latest publication runs to June 2026 with index levels and no twelve-month rate or town-level breakdown. There is no published rural index. Bartica, Lethem, Mabaruma and Mahdia are to be added at the re-basing.