NITI Aayog Member Chand will head the committee, which has been tasked with suggesting a commodity basket

Base yr to shift from 2011-12 to 2022-23

PTI New Delhi

The government on Thursday said it has constituted an 18-member working group, under the chairmanship of NITI Aayog Member Ramesh Chand, to revise the Wholesale Price Index (WPI) base year from 2011-12 to 2022-23.

The revision of the base year helps in presenting a more realistic picture of the price situation in the country.

As per the Terms of Reference (ToR) of the group, it will suggest the commodity basket of WPI and Producer Price Index (PPI) with the base year 2022-23 in the light of structural changes in the economy; review the existing system of price collection and suggest changes for improvement; and decide on the computational methodology to be adopted for WPI / PPI.

The group will also examine the methodology for the compilation of PPI, suggest further improvement in compilation and presentation and recommend a roadmap for switch over from WPI to PPI.

The members of the group include representatives from the RBI, Department of Economic Affairs, Ministry of Statistics, Department of Agriculture, Department of Consumer Affairs, Ministry of Petroleum and Natural Gas; Soumya Kanti Ghosh, Chief Economist, SBI Group.

The non-official members include Economist Surjit Bhalla; Shamika Ravi, Member, Economic Advisory Council to PM; Dharmakirti Joshi, Chief Economist, Crisil; Nilesh Shah, MD, Kotak Mahindra Asset Management; and Indranil Sengupta, Co-Head and Economist, Bank of America Merrill Lynch.

Earlier, there was a plan to revise the base year from 2011-12 to 2017-18.

The Department for Promotion of Industry and Internal Trade (DPIIT) in June 2021 had issued a draft technical report of a working group, which suggests revising the base year of the wholesale price index and addition of about 480 new items such as medicinal plants, lifts, gymnasium equipment and certain motorcycle engines in the new series.