The Steel and Engineering Industries’ of Southern Africa’s Price and Index Pages is the most authoritative publication tracking cost escalation in the metals and engineering sector in South Africa. By having the right information, timely available, correctly calculated and interpreted, all from a central and credible source, SEIFSA has managed to advance the interest of businesses and large procuring agencies for more than 50 years.

For the past 60 years, SEIFSA through the Price and Index Pages service has provided a credible tailor-made tool to adjust for price escalation in contracts, ensuring fair and equitable relationships between buyers and suppliers involved in contracts/on projects.

You are not alone when subscribing to the more than 250 product and product category indices; SEIFSA offers a variety of value added services to help you to get the optimum benefit from this publication. The subscription itself gives you access to;

• A printed booklet through the post, containing the indices and some graphics as well as short commentary on selected tables,
• Online access to the indices,
• A dedicated free telephone assistance service,
• Access to historical information on the indices.

SEIFSA offers regular public training sessions on how to apply the indices, and customized in-house training sessions, if you so wish. The latter is extremely useful as your staff can sit around a trainer, who is the compiler of the indices and use the time to work through your own company’s examples and problems with escalation on a completely confidential basis. These sessions raise the shared understanding of staff members and executives dealing with project planning, cost containment, daily escalation cost claims etc. to a whole new level.

Additional value-added benefits (as and when required on an hourly cost basis) are the following:
• Free monthly reports on the state of price escalation.
• Access to regular interactions and information-sharing sessions with the Price Unit at Statistics South Africa.
• A conflict resolution service where SEIFSA will act as a mediator and recommend best-practice solutions when disputes arise between two parties regarding cost escalation.
• Assistance with actual calculation and submission of escalations; depending on the complexities of such requests, SEIFSA will compile a customized report containing the calculations, with SEIFSA’s stamp of credulity for use in your particular circumstances.

The publication is available on a subscription basis as a service offered by the Economics and Commercial Division of SEIFSA.