Background
The CWG’s Market Mapping Task Force (MMTF), in close coordination with Food Security, Shelter/NFI and WASH Cluster Coordinators, agreed on a new composition of the Survival Minimum Expenditure Basket on June 14th, 2016. Following that action, the Joint Price Monitoring Initiative (JPMI) was tasked with monitoring on monthly basis the prices of the components of the SMEB to inform the CWG on any significant variations in the prices of key commodities, in order to set an equitable cash transfer value for Multi-Purpose Cash Assistance across Iraq.
With support from 14 partners across 8 governorates of Iraq, the JPMI’s first round of data collection was launched in November 2016, and since then, data collection for price monitoring is being rolled out monthly, with a factsheet produced and disseminated widely. JPMI data was triangulated with WFP’s monthly Market Monitor and CWG PDM data available, covering all 18 governorates, and providing governorate level prices for key commodities.
In 2016, the CWG had defined a Minimum Expenditure Basket (MEB), which included more food items, commodities and services, gathered prices and succeeded in calculating governorate level baskets. Subsequently, the CWG reached an agreement regarding the SMEB being equivalent to 70% of the MEB, which eventually translated into the cash transfer value adopted in Iraq in 2016 at USD 400. For the multi-month transfer values, the non-recurring items in the NFI Basket, valued at USD 40 were removed, for a transfer value of USD 360.
The new SMEB composition did not include recurring items, and thus the same value was provided for either one-off or multi-month transfers. The 6% that was added to the total amount for health costs was removed after thorough consultations with the Health Cluster Coordinators. After calculating the SMEB values per governorate, a weighted average based on the number of people in need of multi-purpose cash assistance per governorate was calculated and is equivalent to USD 411.6.
Dropping the USD 11.6 from the average SMEB will enable CWG partners to reach extra 3,682 households with cash assistance.