Separate inflation indicators for India’s rural, urban
By IANSMonday, February 7, 2011
NEW DELHI - India will come up with separate barometers of inflation for rural and urban areas, from Feb 18, to help monitor price movement in different parts of the country, a senior official said Monday
“There will be separate series of a consumer price index (CPI) for rural, urban and combined, (rural plus urban),” Chief Statistician of India T.C.A. Anant told reporters here.
The fist series of the new indices will be released Feb 18 this year. These indices will be available for five major groups namely food, beverages and tobacco, fuel and light, housing, clothing, bedding and footwear and miscellaneous.
“Present CPI numbers do not encompass all the segments of the population the country and as such they do not reflect the true picture of the price behaviour. It is therefore necessary to compile a CPI which takes into account the consumption patterns of all segment of the population,” said a statement from the statistics and programme implementation ministry.
The new series will be based on 2010 price level.
For the new CPI on urban areas, 310 towns have been selected, which include capitals of all states and union territories.
To monitor the price movement in rural areas, the government’s chief statistics office has selected 1,181 villages. “The broad criterion of selection of villages is to have representation of all the districts within state/union territories and two villages from each district have been selected randomly from different tehsils.
The Central Statistical Organisation will also compile a national CPI by merging rural and urban indices with appropriate weightagess.
