New Delhi, 2 January (H.S.): The Central Government has constituted an 18-member working group headed by Professor Ramesh Chand of NITI Aayog to update the Wholesale Price Index (WPI) base year to 2022-23.

The working group constituted under the chairmanship of Professor Ramesh Chand includes 17 other representatives from various government departments, economic advisory bodies and non-official experts.

The working group has been asked to submit its final report to the Office of the Economic Adviser within 18 months of the issuance of the notification.

According to an official release issued by the Ministry of Commerce and Industry on Thursday, the 18-member working group constituted under the chairmanship of Professor Ramesh Chand, member of NITI Aayog, includes representatives from various government departments, economic advisory bodies and non-official experts. The annual inflation rate based on the Wholesale Price Index stood at 1.89 per cent (provisional) in November 2024, as against 2.36 per cent in October and 1.91 per cent in September.

The group includes representatives from the RBI, Department of Economic Affairs, Ministry of Statistics, Department of Agriculture, Department of Consumer Affairs, Ministry of Petroleum and Natural Gas, including SBI Group Chief Economist Soumya Kanti Ghosh. The non-official members include economists Surjit Bhalla, Shamika Ravi, Dharmakirti Joshi, Nilesh Shah and Indranil Sengupta. Earlier, the government had planned to revise the base year from 2011-12 to 2017-18. The Department for Promotion of Industry and Internal Trade (DPIIT) had released a draft technical report of a working group in June 2021, which suggested revising the base year of the Wholesale Price Index and adding about 480 new items such as medicinal plants, elevators, gymnasium equipment and some motorcycle engines in the new series.

Hindusthan Samachar / Jun Sarkar