New Delhi, February 13 (IANS). In the new series of Consumer Price Index (CPI), the inflation rate is also expected to remain below the target of 4 percent. This new series will better reflect the changing spending patterns of people in India and help in making policy at international standards. This has been said in the Bank of Baroda report released on Friday.
In this report of BOB, it has been said that it is important to keep an eye on core inflation, because there is a danger of increase in the prices of precious metals like gold and silver. However, in the new series, balanced weightage has been given to different things, due to which inflation is expected to remain in the range of 4+/-2 percent.
The bank said that the new series will make the main inflation data more accurate and modern, which is important for monetary policy (decisions like interest rates). The seasonal fluctuations in food items have been included in the new series in a better way.
The report said that going forward, the government’s supply-related steps will help in keeping food inflation under control. According to the Essential Commodities Index (ECI) of Bank of Baroda, prices of essential commodities witnessed a decline of 0.4 percent on an annual basis in the first 11 days of February 2026. Except for some edible oils and pulses, prices of other food items are currently under control.
In the new series, a change has been seen in food inflation as compared to earlier. In the old series, food inflation was declining for the last seven months, but in the new series it has shown a slight increase. The bank attributed this change to the reduction in the weighting of the most volatile basket of CPI, i.e. vegetables like tomato, onion and potato.
The number of items in the new series has been increased from 299 to 358. It also included 12 online markets along with 1,465 rural and 1,395 urban markets, and reduced the weight of food items in the CPI basket from 45.8 percent to 40.1 percent.
Things like rural housing, online media and streaming services, value-added dairy products, barley, pen drives and external hard disks have been added. Old things like radio, tape recorder, DVD player and old clothes have been removed.
–IANS
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