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India’s wholesale price inflation quickened to a three-month high of 0.53% in March, from 0.2% in February, with the food index rising 4.65%, led by cereal prices surging at a 12-month-high pace even as the inflation in paddy (11.7%), potato (53%) and onions (57%) accelerated
Fuel and power as well as manufactured products continued to be in deflation mode, though the pace of price declines in both categories narrowed to about -0.8% in March
There are multiple types of baskets of goods used to calculate and track price indexes, depending on the goods and services used.
Consumer Price Indexes (CPI) and Wholesale Price Indexes (WPI) are the most common price indexes.
WPI and CPI are both measures of inflation economists and policymakers use to monitor economic changes.
CPI
It measures the change in the price in the sale of goods or services in retail or directly to the consumer.
It focuses on the goods that the consumer is purchasing.
It is released by the National Statistical Office (NSO), Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation
The base Year for CPI is 2012
Numbers of Items Covered: 448 for rural and 460 for urban
Four different CPI numbers are calculated in India, and they are as follows:
Industrial Workers’ CPI (IW),
Agricultural Labourers’ CPI (AL),
Rural Labourers’ CPI (RL),
Urban Non-Manual Employees’ CPI (UNME).
The Ministry of Statistics and Program Implementation gathers and compiles CPI (UNME) data, while the Labour Bureau of the Ministry of Labour collects the other three.
WPI
It measures the average change in the price in the sale of goods in bulk quantity by the wholesaler.
It focuses on the goods that are traded only between wholesalers or businesses.
Published by the Office of Economic Adviser, Ministry of Commerce and Industry
The base year of All-India WPI has been revised from 2004-05 to 2011-12 in 2017
Numbers of Items Covered: 697 (117+16+564)
There are 117 articles in the new WPI’s primary article group, up from 98 previously, while the energy and electricity category remains the same at 16.
There are 564 manufactured products in the current series, compared to 318 in the previous series
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