OREANDA-NEWS. August 11, 2008. The International Monetary Fund has published the Detailed Assessments to the Report on the Observance of Standards & Code (ROSC) endorsed for Azerbaijan on July 21 made with use of Data Quality Assessment Framework (DQAF) and the Response by the Authorities to this Report.

The Fund reports that the ROSC subject is based on the review of statistical practices, discussions with the data producing agencies and responses from data users. They are designed to increase further adherence to internationally accepted statistical practices and would, in the mission’s view, enhance analytical usefulness of the Consumer Price Index (CPI).

The IMF considers that State Statistics Committee (SSC) could use the recently-formed Statistical Council more proactively to help identify and address users’ concerns in order to foster confidence in the published CPI.

The Council would be a good forum to inform users about the impacts of the SSC’s confidentiality policy, as the Committee has had to limit the disseminated detail of HBS expenditure information that is used for the CPI weights.

The Council could be made aware of user concerns arising on, for example, the product and area weighting of the CPI, as well as any internal and external assessments of such issues.

The SSC also could propose discussion of forward-looking matters such as price indicators to meet new measurement needs with the Council.

In the opinion of the IMF specialists, the SSC should technically evaluate the rental equivalence and user coast approaches to covering the housing services consumption of households that own their dwellings and the net acquisitions approach to households’ capital formation expenditures for dwellings. A specific advisory expert group of SSC and outside experts on the topic of housing could be useful in the evaluation as well.