CPI

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The Central Statistics Office (CSO) of the Ministry of Statistics & Programme Implementation announced that the new series of Consumer Price Index(CPI)  numbers for Rural, Urban and Combined (Rural +Urban) on base 2010 ( January to December)=100 taking all segments of rural and urban population for the month of January, 2011 will be released by the  Central Statistics Office for the States/UTs and all- India on 18th February, 2011.These indices will be available for five major groups namely Food, beverages and tobacco; Fuel and light; Housing; Clothing, bedding and footwear, and Miscellaneous.

 

Present CPI numbers do not encompass all the segments of the population in the country and as such they do not reflect the true picture of the price behavior in the country.  It is therefore necessary to compile a CPI which takes into account the consumption patterns of all segments of the population.

 

New series of CPI for urban areas

 

CPI (Urban) numbers are compiled at State/UT as well as at all- India level.  Weighting diagrams (consumption patterns) of the CPI (Urban) have been derived from the results of the NSS 61st round of Consumer Expenditure Survey (2004-05).

 

For regular price collection, 310 towns have been selected, which include all State/UT capitals. From each selected town, price data are collected in respect of items consumed by the population of the respective State/UT. In all, 1114 price schedules containing an average of 250 items are canvassed every month. House rent data are also collected from a fixed set of rented dwellings from the selected towns. Prices of items are collected by the field officials of the National Sample Survey Office (NSSO).

 

New series of CPI for rural areas

CPI (Rural) numbers are compiled at state/UT and all- India levels. Weighting diagrams of the CPI (Rural) have also been derived from the results of the NSS 61st round of Consumer Expenditure Survey (2004-05).

 

With a view to have a workload within manageable limits and considering the fact that the CPI (Rural) would provide the price changes for the entire rural population of the country, a total of 1181 villages have been selected at all India level. The broad criterion of selection of villages is to have representation of all the districts within State/UT and two villages from each district have been selected randomly from different tehsils. However, to provide adequate representation of the total rural population in some States/UT, allocated number of villages to the states has been increased or decreased on the basis of population of the concerned State/UT. Regular prices are collected by the officials of the Department of Posts. One schedule containing an average of 225 items from each selected village is canvassed for collection of prices every month.

National CPI

CSO will also compile national CPI by merging CPI (Rural) and CPI (Urban) with appropriate weights, as derived from NSS 61st round of Consumer Expenditure Survey (2004-05) data.

Weighting diagrams

The share (weight) of the Food, beverages and tobacco group in the all India CPI (Rural) is 59.31% and it is 37.15% in the all India CPI (Urban). Fuel and light group has a weight of 10.42% in CPI (Rural) and 8.40% in CPI (Urban). Clothing, bedding and footwear group has weight of 5.36% in CPI (Rural) and the weightage of 3.91% in           CPI (Urban). Housing group has not been given any weightage in the rural areas CPI as its share is around 1% and it has been distributed to other groups on pro rata basis. CPI (Urban) has a weightage of 22.53% in respect of Housing group. The Miscellaneous Group consisting of education, medical care, transport and communication etc has 24.91% weight in the all India CPI (Rural) and the corresponding weight in the all India CPI (Urban) is 28%. All India weights of new series of CPI numbers at sub-group and group levels are given in Annex.

Release of indices

Index numbers for both rural and urban areas and also combined for the month of January, 2011 will be released on 18th February, 2011. It is proposed to release provisional indices for a period of one year. Indices for States/UT will be released only if adequate number of schedules is received at the time of compilation of index. These provisional numbers will be subsequently revised and final numbers with complete data for all-India and also for all the States/UTs would be released with a time lag of two months. It is expected that data reporting will be considerably improved and there may not be any need to bring out separate provisional numbers after December, 2011. Indices for January, 2012 onwards along with annual inflation rates are likely to be released with a time lag of one month.

Revision of indices

            These new CPI numbers would be revised on the basis of the results of the next round of Consumer Expenditure Survey scheduled to be conducted during 2011-12 by the NSSO. Thereafter, revision will be undertaken every five years or so (whenever large scale Consumer Expenditure Survey data become available).

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