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Statistics Centre - Abu Dhabi (SCAD) announced today at Abu Dhabi Statistics Conference 2013 the launch of three strategic initiatives, namely the ‘Personal Inflation Calculator’, ‘Purchasing Power Calculator’, and ‘Abu Dhabi Population Clock’. These initiatives are the first of their kind in the Middle East and are being offered online to provide maximum benefit to users.
The Personal Inflation Calculator initiative will allow users to calculate their personal inflation levels, both in terms of individual expenditures and family expenditures. What sets this initiative apart from other inflation calculation tools is that it will allow each family to gauge its personal inflation in comparison to the overall inflation levels. SCAD has utilized technologically advanced methodologies in the system to help families and individuals determine their inflation levels.
The system gathers results based on real data of the family expenditure in key segments and in comparison to the consumer basket. Users can benefit from this service by entering the real value of their monthly or annual expenditure. The system distributes this figure across 12 key segments, which are benchmarked on International Monetary Fund (IMF) standards, to calculate the users’ personal inflation levels.
The method used by the new initiative to calculate family or personal expenditure is more accurate than other techniques which depend on consumer price index (CPI) to calculate the average change in standard products basket, and as a result measures only average inflation levels.
Purchasing Power Calculator links the purchasing power of the UAE dirham with average inflation levels based on CPI. This digital application is capable of calculating the purchasing power of the dirham in Abu Dhabi during any year from 1980 onwards.
In order to know the purchasing power of the dirham during a particular year, the user simply needs to enter the amount, based on which the application will provide details of products that could have been bought with the same amount in that specific year. The application will be beneficial to government and private entities as well as decision makers in the financial sector, entities working on retirement plans, researchers and academics, investors and businessmen, traders in Abu Dhabi stock market, importers and distributors, insurance companies, banks and even the average consumer who might be looking to sell an asset.
Abu Dhabi Population Clock is based on an online program that estimates changes in population levels by the second as per the personal computer’s clock. The change in population numbers is calculated by adding the number of new entries at immigration centres with the new births in the country and deducting the number of deaths reported. While it is very difficult to develop an accurate formula to measure these changes in a place like Abu Dhabi, the Abu Dhabi Population Clock was programmed after putting it through a number of tests during different periods of time to create a highly accurate system with a margin of error not exceeding 0.0003. This is below the average error reported in traditional calculations of populations currently being used in statistical centres around the world.
H.E. Butti Ahmed Mohamed bin Butti Al Qubaisi, Director General of SCAD, said, “We are very excited to launch these initiatives which are a demonstration of our ongoing commitment to provide fresh and accurate data to support the overall development we are witnessing in Abu Dhabi in line with Vision 2030. These initiatives are based on real data and will provide us with the ability to gauge the level of development.”
H.E. Al Qubaisi said SCAD is the only entity that is mandated to provide such data which considerably increases its level of responsibility. However, SCAD is happy to take this responsibility which will help strengthen its commitment to provide realistic solutions and creative ideas, based on useful data, to support the local community and decision makers in future.
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