Machinery and Equipment Price Index (MEPI)

Summary of changes

Activity on this program started: 1955

Reference period of change - August 2024

Starting in October 2024, at the request of our clients, the Machinery and Equipment Price Index (MEPI) will shift from a quarterly to a monthly update. This adjustment provides our clients and users with more timely data.

Reference period of change - third quarter 2014

With the release of third quarter 2014 data, the MEPI series has been converted from a base year of 1997=100 to 2010=100. The relative importance of the basket items has been updated using the 2010 annual gross additions to capital for machinery and equipment purchases by industries in Canada.

Also, the MEPI (2010=100) adopted the commodity and industry classifications incorporated in the current input-output tables of the Canadian System of National Accounts (CSNA) for final demand expenditures by machinery and equipment categories. With the 2012 historical revision of the CSNA, the classifications incorporated in the input-output tables published by Statistics Canada have been updated. The update of the classifications was triggered by the need to capture the evolving structure of the Canadian economy and to align the classifications to updated international classification systems (such as the North American Industry Classification System and the North American Product Classification System). As a result, the number of industry categories used for the MEPI (2010=100) increased from 60 to 66, while the number of commodity categories decreased from 106 to 56.

Reference period of change - first quarter 2006

Estimation - As of the first quarter 2006 release, weights are updated to 1997 current expenditure on capital investment. Both the time and weight base for the rebased MEPI is 1997=100. The classification system of industries and commodities is the 1997 North American Industry Classification System (NAICS).