The Minimum Expenditure Basket (MEB) is a tool to quantify the minimum essential needs in a given household. These needs must be goods or services that can be purchased in the market. Since an MEB quantifies the minimum essential needs that a household is likely to purchase, as such, it is highly contextualized.
The MEB only concerns goods and services for which there is a market. Most sectors (shelter, non-food items (NFI), transportation, communication and food) can be quantified and are available on the market. Some needs (feeling safe, public health care) cannot be quantified and are therefore not part of an MEB. Expenses can be recurrent (food, soap or transportation) or one-off (temporary shelter kit or winterization).
In countries where there is an active Cash Working Group, an MEB may already be established. In cases where there is no agreed-upon MEB, IOM should coordinate with other actors providing CBI to ensure transfer amounts are comparable.
Once an MEB is created, you can ask, what is the best modality to meet those needs? The goods and services listed in an MEB can reach beneficiaries as in-kind or CBI.
The transfer value will change based on:
- Populations’ sectoral needs.
- Additional cash requirements.
- Objective of the programme (e.g. livelihoods recovery).
- Availability (value and coverage) of other humanitarian assistance, such as government interventions.
- Targeting strategy and criteria (e.g. wider coverage with a reduced grant vs. targeted coverage with a bigger grant).
Figure 8: MEB Gap Analysis
Retrieved from Oxfam’s online course “MEB, gap analysis and calculating the transfer value”.
For example: After a flood in southern Mozambique, certain shelter items may not be available on the market and therefore be given in-kind; food items may be accessible in the market, so these needs will be provided for through cash grants. In this case, the cash transfer value will not include costs for shelter.