COLOMBO: Sri Lanka will change the basket of items in its inflation index and broaden coverage to the whole nation from just the capital city, the state-run statistics office said on Wednesday.
Officials said the index change the third in seven years had long been in the works.
However, the move also comes at a time when the country's economic data has faced scrutiny, with calls for revisions from the International Monetary Fund and complaints about official statistics from opposition politicians.
"The current index does not reflect the whole country," D.C.A. Gunawardena, head of the Department of Census and Statistics, told Reuters.
"It represents only 17 percent of the Sri Lankan population." He said the changes will be made this year and the base year for calculating the consumer price index will be 2010.
The current Colombo Consumer Price Index (CCPI) was introduced in June 2008 with a base year of 2006-7.
The statistics department chief said the basket of goods measured will vary depending on the area, but did not give details on how the basket will change.
In its latest country report in May 2013, the IMF said there was need for an "All Sri Lanka" index instead of a Colombo index. Under the current index and a previous one, Sri Lanka has had single-digit inflation since February 2009.
Gunawardena, however, said the Statistics office had been working on a new index to cover the whole country even before the IMF called for such an index.
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