The fifth meeting of the International Working Group on Price Indices, the Ottawa Group was held in Reykjavík, Iceland, August 25-27 1999.

These proceedings include the final versions of the papers presented, summary of the meeting by Robin Lowe and Louis-Marc Ducharme and other meeting information. The proceedings are also available on a CD ROM.

The topics under discussion were two: Treatment of quality change in price indices for durable goods and different concepts of price indices serving different purposes. The participants were 36 and there were 18 papers on these topics available at the meeting.

Many people were active in the preparation of the meeting both at Statistics Iceland and on behalf of the Ottawa Group Steering Committee and I would like to thank them all for their efforts.

The next meeting of the Ottawa Group will be held in Canberra, Australia 2-6 April 2001 and the preparations for that meeting are well on the way now.

Reykjavík, September 2000
Rósmundur Guðnason

Editors: Rósmundur Guðnason and Þóra Gylfadóttir