Wholesale Price Index

March 1, 2011 July 27, 2017

A new WPI series with 2004-05 base was released on 14 September 2010. A representative commodity basket comprising 676 items has been selected and weighting diagram derived for the new series. The total number of price quotations has also increased from 1918 in the old series to 5482 in the new series, indicating better representation of the prices in the wholesale markets. Sector-wise price quotations have increased from the old to new series from 455 to 579 in primary group and from 1391 to 4831 in the manufactured products group. This is shown in the following tables:

This change reflects the change in the structure of the economy. We can understand that any change in Fuel & Power and Manufactured Items prices will affect the general level of pricing more than the same change affected 3 decades ago. 3 decades ago, the change in the primary articles such as food items & cloth was more important than the Fuel & Power and Manufactured Product.
Some of the important items included in the new series basket are flowers, lemons, and crude petroleum in primary articles and ice cream, canned meat, palm oil, readymade/instant food powder, mineral water, computer stationery, leather products, scooter / motorcycle tyres, polymers, petrochemical intermediates, granite, marble, gold and silver, construction machinery, refrigerators, computers, dish antenna, transformers, microwave ovens, communication equipment (telephone instruments), TV sets, VCDs, washing machines, and auto parts in manufactured products.