New series of consumer price inflation to be released tomorrow

The Government will unveil the new series of consumer price inflation for rural, urban and combined (rural+urban), with the figures for January to be released tomorrow.

Unlike other consumer inflation series, the base for the new series of consumer price inflation will be January-December 2010. This is aimed at gauging the exact impact of price rise on common man.

The consumer indices will be available for five major groups — food, beverages and tobacco; fuel and light; housing; clothing, bedding and footwear; and miscellaneous. The indices will be released for states/Union Territories and all-India.

The Government also releases four CPI (Consumer Price Index) inflation series —for industrial workers, agricultural labourers, rural labourers and for urban non-manual employees — which it will continue to do.

The base year for Consumer Price Index for industrial workers is 2001 while that for agricultural and rural labourers is 1986-87. Besides, wholesale prices are measured by the WPI index.

The present four CPI numbers do not encompass all the segments of the population and as such “do not reflect the true picture of the price behaviour in the country”, the Chief Statistician, Mr T.C.A. Anant, had said.

CPI urban and rural is compiled at the state, UT and all-India levels. For regular price collection for CPI (urban), 310 towns have been selected, while for rural data, 1,181 villages spread across India have been zeroed in.

Retail inflation for items consumed by industrial workers increased to 9.47 per cent in December 2010 from 8.33 per cent in the previous month, mainly due to dearer food prices.

The wholesale price index-based inflation fell to 8.23 per cent in January from 8.43 per cent in the previous month. Food inflation declined to 11.05 per cent for the week ended February 5.

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