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Saturday, January 24, 2015

New series of Consumer Price Index from February 2015

According to the news paper report, the Central Govt to release new series of CPI inflation in February…


To present a more accurate and realistic price situation, the government will release next month a new series of Consumer Price Index (CPI) with 2012 as base year for computing retail inflation rate.

The Central Statistics Office (CSO) is in the process revising the Base Year from 2010=100 to 2012=100 so that the gap between Price Reference Year (Base Year) and the Weight Reference Year has been minimised. The first series (revised) would be compiled for January which will be released on February 12 and from January 2016 onwards, inflation rates would be compiled using the actual CPI of the revised series.

Besides, the government has notified a number of methodological improvements have been introduced in the revised series. Prices of Antyodaya Anna Yojanna (AAY) have also been included in addition to Above Poverty Line (APL) & Below Poverty Line (BPL) prices being taken in the existing series.

The weight of food and beverages would be 45.86 in the new series compared to 47.58 in 2010 series for national index. The weight of fuel and light segment would be 6.84 in the new series which is 9.49 in the 2010 series. The weight of clothing and footware segment would be increased to 6.53 from 4.73.

The weight of housing will also be increased to 10.07 from 9.77. Further, the weight of pan, tobacco and intoxicants will be increased to 2.38 from 2.13 in 2010 series. Similarly the weight of miscellaneous will also be increased to 28.32 from 26.31 in the new series.

The number of priced items has been changed from 437 to 448 in rural and from 450 to 460 in urban at all India level. In the revised series, 11 new priced items have also been added, without dropping any item, in rural sector at all India level. In case of urban, 7 priced items have been dropped and 17 new priced items have been added.

Source : PTI