Consumer Price Index
CPI is a statistical time-series measure of a weighted average of prices of a specified set of goods and services purchased by consumers. It is a price index that tracks the prices of a specified basket of consumer goods and services, providing a measure of inflation.
\CPI is a fixed quantity price index and considered by some a cost of living index. Under CPI, an index is scaled so that it is equal to 100 at a chosen point in time, so that all other values of the index are a percentage relative to this one.
Economists Shunmugam and Prasad say it is high time that India abandoned WPI and adopted CPI to calculate inflation.
India is the only major country that uses a wholesale index to measure inflation. Most countries use the CPI as a measure of inflation, as this actually measures the increase in price that a consumer will ultimately have to pay for.
"CPI is the official barometer of inflation in many countries such as the United States, the United Kingdom, Japan, France, Canada, Singapore and China. The governments there review the commodity basket of CPI every 4-5 years to factor in changes in consumption pattern," says their research paper.
It pointed out that WPI does not properly measure the exact price rise an end-consumer will experience because, as the same suggests, it is at the wholesale level.
The paper says the main problem with WPI calculation is that more than 100 out of the 435 commodities included in the Index have ceased to be important from the consumption point of view.
Take, for example, a commodity like coarse grains that go into making of livestock feed. This commodity is insignificant, but continues to be considered while measuring
\CPI is a fixed quantity price index and considered by some a cost of living index. Under CPI, an index is scaled so that it is equal to 100 at a chosen point in time, so that all other values of the index are a percentage relative to this one.
Economists Shunmugam and Prasad say it is high time that India abandoned WPI and adopted CPI to calculate inflation.
India is the only major country that uses a wholesale index to measure inflation. Most countries use the CPI as a measure of inflation, as this actually measures the increase in price that a consumer will ultimately have to pay for.
"CPI is the official barometer of inflation in many countries such as the United States, the United Kingdom, Japan, France, Canada, Singapore and China. The governments there review the commodity basket of CPI every 4-5 years to factor in changes in consumption pattern," says their research paper.
It pointed out that WPI does not properly measure the exact price rise an end-consumer will experience because, as the same suggests, it is at the wholesale level.
The paper says the main problem with WPI calculation is that more than 100 out of the 435 commodities included in the Index have ceased to be important from the consumption point of view.
Take, for example, a commodity like coarse grains that go into making of livestock feed. This commodity is insignificant, but continues to be considered while measuring