YIWU, Zhejiang: The Yiwu China Commodity Index, Yiwu Index for short, the nation's first weighted index to reflect the trading condition of consumer goods in China, was officially publicized yesterday in East China's Zhejiang Province, the country's hub of consumer goods.

The Ministry of Commerce and the Yiwu municipal government joined hands in ordering the index last September and entrusted Zhejiang University of Commerce and a local market management company with the tasks of designing, research, data gathering as well as routine publication.

"We hope to make the Yiwu Index one of the most important indicators of China's macro-economic trends," said Huang Hai, assistant to minister of commerce, at the launching ceremony.

Yiwu Index is a composite index of consumer goods, which comprises three bodies: a price index, a prosperity index and 10 additional single indices. The price index and the prosperity index closed yesterday at 99.97 and 1,268 respectively based on their respective base points of 100 and 1,000, initiated in this July.

In line with international classification standards and the characteristics of the Yiwu consumer market, the index covers 17 categories of daily consumed goods such as jewellery & ornaments, arts & crafts, shoes and garments. In all, 2,443 different commodities as well as 2,412 store-keeps are sampled by the index.

As Huang said, the establishment of the Yiwu Index aims to lay a scientific foundation for the decision-making of the government, to solve the dysfunctions of market information and to provide better guidance for millions of manufacturing enterprises and traders, and to strengthen the nation's capability to influence the pricing of consumer goods in the world.

The price index will be published weekly, the prosperity index monthly and the 10 single indices monthly on the Ministry of Commerce website and major media outlets such as CCTV.

Yiwu has long been famed for establishing one of the largest consumer commodity markets in China. The market size has grown to 2.6 million square metres. 58 thousand business people have stores there, making it a major consumer commodity distribution nerve center and the sourcing center for the international market.

Yiwu Index was publicized on the same day when Yiwu hosted the 12th China Yiwu International Commodity Fair, which has become a leading fair for exporting goods.

The fair, which runs until October 26, is expected to attract 100,000 business people from both home and abroad. Among them, 15,000 will come from foreign countries.

(China Daily 10/23/2006 page3)