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International Comparison Program - Western Asia
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| Nature and Scope |
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ICP can be described as an integrated economic-statistical
system, which utilizes statistical methods to derive the
necessary data for the computation of extremely vital
economic indices, e.g. the Purchasing Power Parity (PPP),
Price and Volume Indices, etc… and use them in economic
analysis.
The initial step of the ICP is to obtain specified data,
e.g. price statistics, public and private expenditures (on
well defined representative and comparative goods and
services) and the estimates of the Gross Domestic Product
(GDP) at various levels of detail, in order to calculate
the PPPs of the respective currencies of the countries
under comparison.
Those PPPs will be used to measure the GDPs and their
components of the countries under comparison, in real
terms, i.e. at PPP, in order to hold realistic comparison
amongst the various economies of the countries. This
approach avoids using the traditional exchange rates of
the national currencies, which had been found misleading
or faulty.
The computation of the PPPs involves various statistical
and mathematical treatments, which need an extensive
utilization of relevant computer software.
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