“The purpose of the paper is to assess the relevance and limitation of economic measures and indicators in gauging poverty alleviation. Regarding CPIs, which make use of prices and quantities of selected commodities, the paper stresses that their relevance in gauging variation of standard of living of individual groups will depend on relevance of the commodities included in the basket purchased by the group and also on the price variation of the commodities under consideration.In Tanzania, the paper points out,CPI currently includes 210 items. A few of them are basic to the poor like maize flour, beans, cassava, sweet potatoes, fish and meat. However, other items consumed by the poor and vulnerable like sorghum and millet are excluded. Their exclusion may affect the CPI.”
