Production cost index for ceramic raw materials in Turkish mining sector

Variation in prices continuously makes it hard to estimate the prices for the engineers involved in project preparation. A method of providing beginning price estimation is to examine a similar fulfilled project cost. As the cost values refer to earlier period years, these values ought to be updated. A cost index is the most appropriate method to revise the cost values referring to the previous years. Thus, the ratio of varying cost and income that is required to investment analysis could be practically estimated. Common price indexes have been published by the chamber of the commerce and authorized statistical institutions in every country. Besides there are many particular sectoral indexes formed and published in the international journals. In Turkey, this sort of sectoral cost indexes haven't been published yet. Wholesale Price Index (TEFE) is the most common index used in the feasibility studies published by the State Institute of Statistics (DIE) and some Chambers of Commerce. Development and use of a special index that cover the sectoral structure will support the estimations more meaningful. In this study, the production cost index for ceramic clay which is an important raw material for the ceramic sector has been calculated. The Laspeyres formula has been used for the index calculations. This index for year of 1990 was assigned as 100. Obtained index values have been compared with TEFE indexes. The graphics revealed that the price index for each mine have shown differences from TEFE. Special price indexes should be published for each sector and also subsectors due to these differences.