Cape Town - The possibility that inflation figures had been overstated by Statistics SA could mean the government had paid more to service its debt than it should have, Maria Ramos, the director-general of the national treasury, said on Friday.

Ramos told parliament's two finance committees this particularly applied to inflation-linked bonds.

But the treasury still had to assess the figures now being revised by Stats SA to determine the full impact of the possible overstatement, she said when briefing the committees on her 2003/04 departmental budget.

Trevor Manuel, the finance minister, is due today to meet officials from the Statistics Council and Stats SA in Pretoria. He will hold a press conference afterwards.

Rudolf Gouws, the chief economist of Rand Merchant Bank, said the inaccurate consumer inflation figures could cause price complications for contracts linked to the consumer price index (CPI).

Gouws said it could, for instance, lead to legal claims in connection with building contracts.

Dan Hurter, the executive director of the SA Federation of Civil Engineering Contractors, said the organisation was still studying the possible impact of inaccurate data.

"It's not a simple thing. We've got an economist working on it  
. We've got to feed [the data] into our formula to see what it does to cost side," he said.

Peter Bold, the chief executive of the Joint Building Contracts Committee (JBCC), said that from a contractual point of view he could not see incorrect CPI figures having "any impact whatsoever".

Bold said the use of contract price adjustment provisions in a building contract was an adjustment provision and not an attempt to set an exact measure of actual cost changes.

He said contract price adjustment provisions were an index and the alternative to the old method of a contractor being paid compensation for proven costs.

The committee's work group on concrete considered the components of concrete - sand, stone, cement, labour and steel - which were all weighted against one another.

The committee measured the inflation factor of these components, Bold said, and the CPI did not come into the calculation.

The JBCC groups building-related organisations, including the SA Property Owners' Association, the Building Industries Federation of South Africa, architects, quantity surveyors and engineers.

It has been developing a suite of building contracts which have been endorsed by the government. - Lynda Loxton and Roy Cokayne