The African Statistical Journal, Volume 5

Abstract

This paper is a brief introduction to the methods used to aggregate purchasing power parities and related results for the International Comparison Program for Africa. Using national average prices of a comprehensive set of goods and services representing all GDP components, unweighted basic heading parities are obtained through an elementary aggregation process. These basic parities are in turn aggregated using corresponding basic heading expenditures to generate PPPs - and hence price-adjusted real quantities - for each expenditure category up to GDP level.