In a move that could change the whole dynamics of the calculation of the consumer price index (CPI) - a key indicator considered by the Reserve Bank of India while determining monetary policy, the statistics ministry is planning to include ecommerce in the calculation of CPI.
Though, the move was still not confirmed but it is said that the ministry wants to refine the CPI basket of goods by capturing price movements in the online space, as more Indians take to shopping online for necessities such as groceries apart from clothing and footwear, a trend that's not getting captured in the data set.
Online shopping is presently not in the CPI basket and since price movements may be different for a few items as compared to the regular shopping, there is some scope of improvement by including some of them. It has also been said that the ministry has identified some online retailers with RBI’s help to understand price movements due to discounts offered by them.
The move is still in the preliminary stages, as last year only, the Central Statistics Office revised the CPI base year from 2010 to 2012 to make it consistent with the international practice of shorter reference periods for most food articles and longer reference periods for items of infrequent consumption and purchase and if a change in the index has to be done, it will be done only when the base is revised again.
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