Price data at your fingertips with 'KitaJaga' application

The Economy Ministry has launched “KitaJaga”, an application that can display the daily price of each item according to a specific locality.

According to its minister Rafizi Ramli, the application, built by his ministry in collaboration with local organisation KitaJaga, will enable consumers to buy wisely with the price data at their fingertips.

“The KitaJaga organisation has taken advantage of open data on the OpenDOSM website that was launched a few months ago, and web developers and coders are encouraged to continue using granular data from OpenDOSM in products that benefit the people.

“The Economy Ministry will start with the price of grocery items because most of the price increases are concentrated in this category, and expand to other categories for the people's use,” he told a press conference today.

Commenting further, Rafizi (above) said the government is aware that the prices of goods remain relatively high, and thus, it is determined to ease the people's burden by implementing related programmes.

“This does not mean that people should only buy cheap stuff, but such an application can be a benchmark to purchase, in addition to fostering a data-driven mindset."

Meanwhile, Rafizi said the country's inflation rate remained at 3.7 percent as of Feb 23 - the same level it was in January.

He noted that the main contributors to the month's inflation were the food and non-alcoholic beverages category (7.0 percent) where the flood increased the price of vegetables, as well as the restaurant and hotel category (7.4 percent), which was due to the increase in domestic and international visitors. - Mkini