India’s Consumer Price Index (CPI), a measure of the retail inflation, is undergoing an overhaul after more than a decade, with several changes to be adopted in the methodology. Changes in the methodology will include reshaping price coverage, data sources, and dissemination. The changes are aimed at making inflation readings more reflective of how Indians spend today, including on digital and e-commerce platforms. The new CPI series is expected to come from 2026.
One of the primary changes introduced is the revision of base year. Till now for the calculation of CPI, 2012 was considered as the base year, which has now been revised to 2024.
Another key shift is the expanded price coverage. Under the new series, price data points will be gathered from 1,395 urban markets spread across 434 towns and 1,465 villages. This will include more than 500 locations in both urban and rural areas as compared with the 2012 series.
With a broader geographic footprint regional price variations are likely to be captured better. Also, for the first time, CPI compilation will also draw prices beyond physical stores and will also have data from e-commerce platforms.
“In addition to the price data collected from physical outlets as being done in the current series, prices are also being collected from e-commerce platforms in 12 selected cities having a population of more than 25 lakh as per the 2011 Census,” MoSPI stated in their report.
The story is reported by Pushpita Dey of The New Indian Express.
