Revision of Wholesale Price Index (WPI)

            The Committee of Secretaries (CoS) in its meeting held on 9^th August, 2010 approved the release of new series of Wholesale Price Index (WPI) with 2004-05 as its base and directed that it may be released on September 14, 2010. Accordingly WPI new series is proposed to be released tomorrow.  Simultaneously, the release of the current series of WPI with 1993-94 as its base will be discontinued. Some of the broad features of new series of WPI are as follows:

 

·                     A representative commodity basket comprising 676 items has been selected and a new weighting diagram reflecting the current structure of the economy has been derived for the new series. 

 

·                     The number of quotations selected for collecting price data for the above items is 5482.  Thus, there is substantial increase in the number of items in the commodity basket and number of quotations for collecting price data in comparison to the existing series. 

 

·                     A comparative statement of weights, no. of items and no. of quotations between the current series and new series is given for the major groups in the table below:

 

Major Group	Weight		No. of items		No. of Quotations
	2004-05	1993-94	2004-05	1993-94	2004-05	1993-94
All Commodities	100.000	100.000	676	435	5482	1918
1. Primary Articles	20.118	22.0253	102	98	579	455
2. Fuel & Power	14.910	14.226	19	19	72	72
3. Manufactured Products	64.972	63.749	555	318	4831	1391

 

                 Some of the important items included in the new series basket are Flowers, Lemon and Crude Petroleum in Primary Articles and Ice cream, Canned Meat, Palm oil, Readymade/instant food powder, Mineral water, Computer stationary, Leather Products, Scooter / Motorcycle tyre, Polymers, Petrochemical intermediates,  Granites, Marbles, Gold and Silver, Construction Machinery, Refrigerators, Computers, Dish Antenna, Transformer, Microwave oven, Communication equipments (telephone instruments), TV sets, VCD, Washing machine and auto parts in Manufactured Products.

 

The new series of WPI is based on the recommendations of the Working Group which was set up earlier with Prof. Abhijit Sen, Member, Planning Commission as the Chairman.  The Working Group submitted its Technical Report in May 2008 and recommended the change of the base year to 2004-05. 

 

Technical Advisory Committee on Statistics of Prices and Cost of Living of the Central Statistical Organization also approved the shift in the base year, selection of commodity basket and derivation of weighting diagram with the new series of WPI in its meeting held on December 31, 2009.