New Features

♤ In the new seriesof WPI, prices used for compilation do not include indirect taxes in order to remove impact of fiscal policy. This is in consonance with international practices and will make the new WPI conceptually closer to ‘Producer Price Index’.

♤ A new “WPI Food Index” will be compiled to capture the rate of inflation in food items. This is being compiled combining the “Food Articles” under “Primary Articles” and “Food Products” under “Manufactured Products”. Together with the Consumer Food Price Index released by Central Statistics Office, this would help monitor the price situationof food itemsbetter.

♤ Seasonality of fruits and vegetables has been updated to account for more months as these are now available for longer duration.

♤ Item level aggregates for new WPI are compiled using Geometric Mean (GM) following internationalbest practice and as is currently used for compilation of All India CPI.

♤ A high level Technical Review Committee has been set up for the first time to carry out dynamicreview process in order to keep pace with the changing structure of the economy.

♤ Under the new series of WPI, weight of manufactured items has decreased to 64.2 per cent from 64.9 per cent in old series. Similarly, the weight of fuel and power has decreased to 13.1 per cent from 14.9 per cent. On the other hand, the weight of primary items have increased to 22.6 per cent from 20.1 per cent.