NEW DELHI: India on Thursday introduced a new series of its Consumer Price Index (CPI), the benchmark that tracks retail inflation, starting with January data at 2.75 per cent.
The new series covers a higher number of goods and services and realigns the weightage of various constituents. Along with data collected from more rural and urban markets, the reading is expected to reflect the quality of data used in formulating monetary and fiscal policies.
The data has been released by the National Statistics Office (NSO) under the Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation.
The new index will reflect changes in spending patterns since the last overhaul done more than a decade ago. CPI under the new series came in at 2.75 per cent for January, according to NSO.
The food inflation for January has worked out to be 2.13 per cent, and housing at 2.05 per cent. The retail inflation, under the old series with base year 2012, was 4.26 per cent in January 2025 and 1.33 per cent in December.
Headline inflation in rural areas during January was 2.73 per cent and in urban India 2.77 per cent, according to NSO data.
Telangana had the highest inflation at 4.92 per cent, followed by Kerala and Tamil Nadu. The top 5 items with low inflation in January were garlic, onion, potato, arhar, tur dal, and peas. On the other hand, high inflation was in silver jewellery, tomato, coconut-copra, gold, diamond, platinum jewellery, and coconut oil.
Base has been revised from 2012 to 2024 using the Household Consumption Expenditure Survey (HCES) 2023-24.
In the new series coverage has widened to 358 items from 299 - including 308 goods and 50 services with price data now collected from 1,465 rural and 1,395 urban markets, as well as 12 online marketplaces. The new CPI series expands classification from six to 12 groups, adding several standalone categories to provide greater granularity.