Tuesday, March 27, 2012

Explanation of our Ukarumpa Food Basket

Here is more information, for those who are interested, about how I came up with the prices referred to in the last blog post:

A market basket is a collection of items economists use to measure inflation. I tried to gather a basket of goods that most closely resembled the market baskets used in the
US and the UK. Of course I couldn't collect exactly the same items that are used in our home countries. For instance, I used UHT boxed milk, as fresh milk isn't available in our store. I didn't include fruit and vegetables because oranges and apples (which I was planning to put in the basket) are out of stock here right now.

I found prices for UK and US items on supermarket websites. I chose the cheapest items; although these may not have been closest in quality to the ones available here, they are the items that we would purchase if we were living in our home countries. Here are detailed figures: