Inflation series with new base year from May 14

The new index, with 2004-05 as the base year, will have 250 new items and is expected to provide a more realistic picture of price rise and its impact on people.
"As per the calendar, April data would be release on May 14 with the new base year," a senior official said.

The new series would have about 680-685 items that include mobile phones, LCD TV among others, the official said adding close to 25 items would be knocked off from the new inflation series.

"Existing series has some obsolete items like type- writers. They will not figure in the new series," the official said.With the addition of new items, data reporting would be more representative and give a better picture of the price situation, the official added.The Wholesale Price Inflation (WPI) is at present calculated with 1993-94 as the base year.

Asked if there would be any variations in the inflation when it will switch to the new base year, the official said, "it would be insignificant and the variation would be less than 1 per cent."The Department of Industrial Policy and Promotion, which brings out the inflation data, has been doing test run for the past 5-6 weeks and the concurrent run would be done for February.

Most of the additions would be in the manufacturing products category and the primary items, which consist of foodgrain and milk, would remain unchanged, the official added.

There could be minor changes in the fuel, power light and lubricant group.
With the addition of new items on the manufacturing side, the weight of the food article group would decline by about 2-3 percentage in the new WPI.

In the existing series (1993-94), the weight of primary articles is 22.02 per cent while manufactured products contribute 63.75 per cent. The weight of fuel, power, light and lubricants in the index is about 14 per cent