Government has decided to constitute a Working Group for the revision of the current series of Wholesale Price Index. The Working Group is formed with Niti Aayog Member Prof Ramesh Chand as its chairman, according to a statement here on Thursday.
The Office of Economic Adviser, Department for Promotion of Industry and Internal Trade will be the nodal office for the Working Group and will process the report or recommendation of the Group for further necessary action.
The Terms of Reference of the Working Group will be to select the most appropriate Base Year for the preparation of a new official series of Index Numbers of WPI and Producer Price Index (PPI) in India, to review commodity basket of the current series of WPI and suggest additions or deletions of commodities in the light of structural changes in the economy witnessed since 2011-12.
The group will review the existing system of price collection in particular for manufacturing sector and suggest changes for improvement, decide on the computational methodology to be adopted for monthly WPI/PPI and examine the existing methodology of compilation of PPI approved by Technical Advisory Committee on Series of Prices and Cost of Living and suggest further improvement in compilation and presentation.
The Working Group may recommend roadmap for switch over from WPI to PPI.The Chairman of the Working Group may co-opt experts or representatives of other agencies, as may be considered necessary.
The current series of Wholesale Price Index (WPI) with 2011-12 as base year was introduced in May 2017. Since 2011-12, significant structural changes have taken place in the economy. Therefore, it has become necessary to examine the coverage of commodities, weighting diagram and related issues pertaining to the existing series of index numbers of Wholesale Price Index.
