Government is going to release a new series of Consumer Price Index (CPI) with 2012 as base year for computing retail inflation rate for the month of for January 2015; the change has been effected in order to present a better picture of the price situation in the country.
The Central Statistics Office (CSO), which has recently revised the base year and methodology for computing national account has revised the Base Year from 2010=100 to 2012=100 for the CPI calculation, with this (base) revision, the gap between Price Reference Year (Base Year) and the Weight Reference Year has been minimised.
In the new series not only the base year has been revised but a number of methodological improvements have been introduced, accordingly the weight of food and beverages would be 45.86 in the new 2012 series compared to 47.58 in 2010 series for national index, while the weight of fuel and light segment would be 6.84 in the new series as against 9.49 in the 2010 series and the weight of clothing and footwear segment would be increased to 6.53 from 4.73 while that of housing will be 10.07 from 9.77.
Further, the number of priced items has been changed from 437 to 448 in rural and from 450 to 460 in urban at all India level. The 11 new priced items have been added, without dropping any item, in rural sector at all India level. In case of urban, 7 priced items have been dropped and 17 new priced items have been added.