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Consumer Price Index (CPI) new method market additions for the calculation of the inflation data skewed towards few states as UP, Maharashtra accounts for 43 per cent of new markets, stated a report by SBI.
The report noted that the CPI 2024 has increased its coverage both geographically and in terms of number of items. Overall, 565 more markets, both rural and urban, have been included in CPI-2024 as compared to CPI-2012. However, out of these 565 new markets, only two states, Uttar Pradesh and Maharashtra, accounted for 43 per cent share. The report said "This indicate that inclusion of new markets is quite skewed and tilted more towards certain states". Apart from the expansion in markets, the number of weighted items has also increased in the new series. The total number of weighted items in the 2024 series stands at 358, compared to 299 in the earlier series. Among these, goods have increased from 259 to 314, while services have risen from 40 to 50 items. New additions to the CPI basket include Rural housing, Online media service provider/Streaming services, Value added dairy products, Barley & its product, Pendrive & External Hard disk, Attendant, Babysitter and Exercise equipment. At the same time, items such as VCR/VCD/DVD player and hiring charges, Radio, Tape recorder, Clothing second-hand, CD/DVD audio/video cassettes and Coir/rope have been removed as they have become obsolete. Further, 12 online markets have been added across 12 towns having more than 25 lakh population as per the 2011 census. These include Mumbai, Delhi, Bengaluru, Hyderabad, Ahmedabad, Chennai, Kolkata, Surat, Pune, Jaipur, Lucknow and Kanpur. The addition aims to capture price variations of items on e-commerce and online platforms on a weekly basis. However, as the 2011 census was used for selecting cities, some growing cities such as Indore, Patna, Nagpur, Bhopal and Thane are missing from the list, even though they are close to becoming 25-lakh population cities. On the inflation front, India's CPI inflation rose to 2.75 per cent in January 2026, compared to 2.55 per cent in the old series using the linking factor (0.5267). Rural inflation stood at 2.73 per cent, while urban inflation was at 2.77 per cent. Food inflation was recorded at 2.13 per cent. The core CPI under the new series stood at 3.4 per cent in January 2026, compared to around 4.15 per cent under the old series in January 2026. The decline in core inflation is mainly due to the change in weightage of gold, which declined to 0.62 per cent in the 2024 series from 1.08 per cent in the 2012 series. (ANI)
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