Government Forms Working Group for Revising WPI Base Year
Click to start listening
New Delhi, Jan 2 (NationPress) On Thursday, the government revealed the establishment of a Working Group chaired by NITI Aayog member Ramesh Chand to revise the base year of the present series of the Wholesale Price Index (WPI) from 2011-12 to 2022-23.
The Working Group has been instructed to deliver its final report to the Office of the Economic Adviser within a span of 18 months.
Membership of the group includes representatives from the RBI, the Finance Ministry's Department of Economic Affairs, the Ministry of Statistics, the Department of Consumer Affairs, the Department of Agriculture, and the Ministry of Petroleum and Natural Gas. Additionally, SBI Chief Economist Soumya Kanti Ghosh has been appointed as a member.
Among the non-official members are Economist Surjit Bhalla; Shamika Ravi, Member of the Economic Advisory Council to the PM; Dharmakirti Joshi, Chief Economist at Crisil; Nilesh Shah, MD of Kotak Mahindra Asset Management; and Indranil Sengupta, Co-Head and Economist at Bank of America Merrill Lynch.
The Working Group's terms of reference include proposing the commodity basket for WPI and PPI (Producer Price Index) with a base year of 2022-23, considering the structural changes in the economy.
The group will assess the current price collection methods and recommend enhancements.
It will also determine the computational methodology for WPI/PPI and review the compilation methodology for PPI approved by the Technical Advisory Committee on Statistics of Prices & Cost of Living, suggesting improvements in both compilation and presentation, along with a recommended roadmap for transitioning from WPI to PPI.
Additionally, the working group will analyze the current method for calculating the linking factor and propose necessary adjustments to this method.
Furthermore, the group is empowered to recommend any additional improvements required to bolster the reliability of WPI/PPI.
The Chairman of the Working Group has the authority to invite experts from other agencies as deemed necessary.
