Let’s be more effective!

A few days after the DSEC disclosed the inflation rate of 2.2 per cent for January 2017, I predicted that in February inflation would be down to less than 2 per cent.
This was confirmed recently.
In February inflation was at 1.91 per cent!
But there is something weird about these values, as the rent values have also fallen, which is incongruent with housing sales prices, which have risen colossally in recent months.
In January 2017 and January 2016, housing prices were around 14.48 and 11.79 times higher than prices in the second quarter of 2003, which confirms the rise in property prices until January 2017.
Of course, there is a lag between the rise in house sale prices and its repercussions on rental values.
And I refer here to the so-called “inputed rentals to housing”, weighing 19.76 per cent in Macau’s consumer expenditures basket.
Any disproportionate variation of housing rents can pull inflation up or down with some intensity. That is, it can contribute heavily to the change in the value of inflation.
What has happened? There has been a steady decline, since January 2016, in the year-on-year values of the variation of rents, making these values negative from June 2016 until today.
If we continue on this path of negative variations of housing rents, in a scenario of rising housing prices, this is hardly acceptable. So the “inputed rentals to housing” used in calculating our inflation, give a sign that something is wrong with this calculation.
I am not even talking about a lower growth in the value of rents. I’m talking about a decrease in the value of rents used for the calculation of our inflation.
The DSEC does a quality job, although it seems to me that the process of collecting information likely leaves a lot to be desired.
In some cases, it may even generate absurdities.
So when that happens, the DSEC should question the calculations.
I think the DSEC has not received the kind of support from the government that its importance demands.
The Correctional Services saw their budgets rise from MOP340.3 million to MOP579.3 million between 2012 and 2017, and Statistics from MOP152 million to just MOP198.2 million.
Without proper knowledge of the reality of the situation, no economic policies can be done seriously and scientifically, because the basis of work will be poorly known!