Construction material price indices in Panama

What it measures

An index compares the price trend of the same material with its base month. It does not compare the price of two different materials.

Hypothetical teaching example, not an observed material value. It illustrates INEC’s base of 100. The index is measured in points. INEC methodology.

Recent table

Every cell shows an index. The unit below each material identifies the INEC reference item.

Source: INEC official table and CSV published September 14, 2026; original values retained. View original table.

Explore series

Open a material to view its monthly trend. All series and downloads remain available without JavaScript.

Downloads

CSV: UTF-8, comma separator and decimal point. JSON: metadata and observations; one record per month and material. Material names and reference units are provided in Spanish and English. The index field contains index points, not USD.

Methodology

What INEC calculates

INEC collects retail prices of items with comparable specifications and calculates a separate index for each material. The base is July 2007. Its methodology does not combine the 13 materials into an overall construction index. Complete methodology, 2 pages.

What Gallardía transformed

Gallardía converted the official CSV to UTF-8 and long format, retaining the one-decimal values. It trimmed whitespace in month names, converted dates to YYYY-MM and removed two verified empty columns. The six empty rows from January to June 2007 were recorded as missing and were not filled in. Each observation includes the source row, column, header, URL and SHA-256 checksum. In March, April and May 2020, the original CSV contains zeros; INEC’s historical table identifies these months as unavailable. The original value is kept in source_value, while index is empty in CSV or null in JSON, with a status and corrective source. Charts leave a gap without interpolation. INEC December 2020 table.

Verification and scope

The 273 values from December 2024 to August 2026 match the PDF table and the current sheet of the original Excel workbook rounded to one decimal. Earlier values come from the official historical CSV and were not separately checked against every monthly PDF.

Limitations

Coverage does not represent every province. No series were rebased, materials weighted, missing values interpolated or prices calculated. Reference units identify the observed item; they are not monetary units of the index. Changes calculated from rounded indices may differ from INEC’s published rates. This page shows index levels and does not calculate those rates. If INEC revises a value, this download remains a snapshot identified by its date and SHA-256.

Licence and sources

Original data: Instituto Nacional de Estadística y Censo (INEC), Contraloría General de la República de Panamá. The official page declares Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International. The standardized version retains that licence and attribution; Gallardía is responsible for the format transformation. Source documents remain in Spanish.

Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International · INEC official page and licence

How to cite this version

INEC. (2026, September 14). Simple price indices of principal construction materials, series through August 2026. July 2007=100. Version standardized by Gallardía, 2026-08.1. https://gallardia.lat/datos/indice-precios-materiales-construccion-panama/ DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.23304844.

The normalized version 2026-08.1 is deposited in Zenodo, with original data from INEC and data curation by Gallardía. Use the persistent DOI to cite this snapshot and access its archived files.

INEC is the data source. The licence does not imply INEC’s endorsement of Gallardía. Format changes are documented and provenance is retained.

Using it in a project

The series can provide material-price context when planning purchases. For repairs or remodeling, the cause of damage, quantities, scope, labor and site conditions must be assessed separately.