Tech to catch price trends in CPI revision

The government plans to switch to Computer-Assisted Personal Interviewing for collection of price trends, gearing up for revision of the base year to 2024 from 2012 and weightage of items tracked for Consumer Price Index to enhance the efficiency and accuracy of data.

The revision of the CPI base year is currently under progress and weights for the items will be derived from the Household Consumption Expenditure Survey (HCES) 2022-23, the ministry said. The inflation data based on the new base year will be released in 2026. The CPI tracks monthly retail prices of goods and services, currently covering 299 items across 1,181 rural and 1,114 urban markets.

In the revised CPI series, the weightage of food items is likely to be reduced based on reduced share of food in overall consumption.


The share of food in average monthly consumption expenditure in rural areas dropped to 46.4% in 2022-23 from 52.9% in 2011-12, while in urban areas, it declined to 39.2% from 42.6%, according to HCES 2022-23.

Experts had mentioned a reduction of 6.5 percentage points in the share of food items in the CPI for rural areas and 3.4 percentage points for urban areas, based on HCES 2022-23, ignoring minor adjustments, as reported earlier by ET.