Retail Inflation above 6% in June 2020

Consumer Price Index Numbers on base 2012=100 for Rural, Urban and Combined for the Month of June 2020

The National Statistical Office (NSO), Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation is releasing Consumer Price Index (CPI) on Base 2012=100 for Rural, Urban and Combined for the month of June 2020 (Provisional) in this press note. The corresponding Consumer Food Price Index (CFPI) for all India Rural, Urban and Combined are also being released.

2. The Price data are usually collected from selected 1114 urban markets and selected 1181 villages through personal visits by field staff of Field Operations Division of NSO, MoSPI on a weekly roster. In view of the preventive measures and announcement of nation-wide lockdown by the Government to contain spread of COVID-19 pandemic, the price collection of Consumer Price Index (CPI) through personal visits of price collectors was suspended. During the lockdown period, prices were collected through telephonic call from the designated outlets in selected markets, which was supplemented by information collected during the personal purchase of field staff for the items being transacted from neighborhood outlets keeping in view the travel advisories. As the various pandemic related restrictions were gradually lifted and non-essential activities started resuming operations, NSO collected prices from 1030 urban markets and 998 villages, for commodities that were available and transacted during the month of June, 2020. The data collected, however, did not meet the adequacy criteria for generating robust estimates of CPIs at the State-level.

3. In view of above, all India indices have been compiled by considering a common market at the national level in both Rural & Urban sectors separately. All-India General (all-groups), Group and Sub-group level CPI and CFPI numbers and corresponding inflation for June 2020 (P) for Rural, Urban and Combined have been compiled and presented at Annex-I. The CFPI indices for May 2020 have also been revised based on the price data additionally reported. The corresponding inflation rates are summarized below:

Table 1: All India Inflation Rates (%) based on CPI (General) and CFPI

Notes: Prov. – Provisional, Combd. – Combined; ‘–‘ : CPI (General) was not released for May 2020.

4. To address the non-availability of data for several sub-groups during April and May, 2020, NSO undertook a separate exercise based on the imputation methodology recommended in ‘Business Continuity Guidelines’, brought out by Inter-Secretariat Working Group on Price Statistics (ISWG-PS) (combined forum of ILO, EuroStat, OECD, UNECE, World Bank and IMF) in May, 2020. Broadly, this approach advocated imputing the missing (due to non-availability of data) sub-group index with the index computed using the index at the next higher level of aggregation, compiled based on available/observed data. A detailed ‘Technical Note’ on this methodology is available on the Ministry’s website for benefit of the users of CPI. The results are presented at Annex-II.

5. Price data are received through web portal, maintained by the National Informatics Centre.

6. Next date of release is scheduled for 12th August, 2020 (Wednesday) for the month of July 2020.

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Annex I

All India Consumer Price Indices and year-on-year Inflation rates (%) for June, 2020 (Provisional)

(Base: 2012=100)