DefinePK

Abstract

In this note an attempt is made to extend the wholesale priceindex prepared in the Institute of Development Economics1 to 1960-61.That index, which was computed for the East and West wings separatelyand for the whole of Pakistan, covered a period of nine years from1951-52 to 1959-60 (July-June) with 1951-52 as the base year. The WestPakistan index covers 35 commodities while the commodities included inEast Pakistan index number 25. The weights for each wing are derivedfrom the net quantity available to final users in each year. It shouldbe remembered that this whole¬sale price index is not an all-purposegeneral price index; its coverage and scope are limited. It is a measureof annual wholesale price changes for certain goods in East and in WestPakistan. Further details of the index may be found in the monographcited in footnotel. The present index for 1960-61 is computed by theLaspeyres formula alone as it was not possible to calculate the Paascheindex without information on quantities available during 1960-61.2 Forthe same reason it is not possible to extend the analysis of quantityindices previously presented for both wings of Pakistan.3