§ Mr. Austin Mitchellasked the Secretary of State for Trade whether he will publish in the Official Report a table comparing the weights used in table F2 of the February issue of the Monthly Review of External Trade Statistics, with the weights used in computing the effective exchange rate of sterling; and whether he is satisfied that the latter is still a satisfactory measure of changes in the effective rate.
§ Mr. LawsonI have been asked to reply.
The weights used in calculating the weighted average of the United Kingdom's competitors' export prices are published in table F2 of the Monthly Review of External Trade Statistics. The weights used in calculating the effective index for sterling were published in the Treasury's Economic Progress Report for March 1977 and in the Bank of England Quarterly Bulletin for March 1977. The weights in the effective index are based on those derived from the IMF's multilateral exchange rate model—MERM. This has recently been updated and new 244W weights for calculating effective indices will be available in due course.