REGIONAL RELEVANCY OF THE CIDA PRICE INDICES UNDER THE RESTRICTIONS URGED BY THE COVID-19 PANDEMIC

Abstract

CIDA price fluctuation formula and price indices provide considerable relief to the estimators in mitigating the risk due to the fluctuation of the price of construction inputs during project execution. But there is a huge outcry that the CIDA indices does not appropriately reflect the actual fluctuation of market prices especially during the period of pandemic. The aim of this research was to identify the appropriateness of CIDA indices in ascertaining the price fluctuation of construction material prices across the regions especially under the restrictions imposed by the Covid-19 pandemic. The study was limited to analysis the regional behavior of material prices based on the significant materials. Market price of construction materials was collected from suppliers, constructors, and construction professionals who are currently involved in construction projects. The market prices were collected from nine provinces of the country for eight different types of significant materials during the period of pandemic. Collected data were first observed for its behavior within and across the provinces to check the appropriateness to be represented by country wide common indices. This was done through the analysis of variance and through the checking of null hypothesis i.e., “always there is no difference in means between the provincial prices of a given material”. Thereafter the fluctuation of provincial prices of given inputs were compared to the variation of respective CIDA indices with the corresponding time to check the parallelism and correlation. In this research, it has been concluded that, there is a requirement for establishing regional monthly indices for construction inputs.