Consumer Price Index

Although inflation remains well below the Reserve Bank of India's 4 per cent target, the new figures could prompt the central bank to hold off on any further rate cuts and push up bond yields further

CPI tracks retail price changes across India; January 2026 inflation data shifts to a new 2024 base year reflecting updated spending patterns

India's retail inflation gauge has evolved from fragmented worker-specific indices to a unified CPI framework that now anchors monetary policy and welfare decisions

The old-weight estimates place January CPI inflation at 2.5 per cent- 2.6 per cent, while the new-weight estimates span 2.45 per cent to 3.2 per cent

MoSPI's revised CPI modernises price collection, updates weights and aligns with global standards, reshaping how inflation trends are measured and interpreted

The RBI's MPC held rates steady, citing improved growth and benign inflation, while announcing regulatory steps to boost credit flow and strengthen digital payment safety

India's new CPI series, with lower food weight and higher core components, may nudge headline inflation higher but is expected to improve policy predictability and ease RBI's targeting

As RBI reviews its inflation-targeting framework ahead of 2026, former MPC members back the 4% CPI target, saying the model has anchored expectations despite global shocks

India will sharply reduce the food and beverages weight in the CPI basket as part of a 2024 base-year revamp, aiming to better capture evolving consumption patterns

CPI-food inflation peaked at 16.12 per cent in April 2018, while the lowest reading was recorded in April 2019

Gold inflation soared to 68.66 per cent, while silver witnessed a spike of 97.07 per cent amid festival demand

The government proposes to include online sources as well as e-commerce platforms to compute retail inflation in a bid to substantially improve reliability, accuracy, and overall quality of the consumer price index (CPI). Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation (MoSPI) is in the process of revising the base years for computing CPI, Index of Industrial Production (IIP) and Gross Domestic Product (GDP). The new series of CPI (consumer price index-based inflation) with base year (2024=100) data is scheduled to be released on February 12, 2026. The data on National Accounts with financial year 2022-23 as base year is scheduled to be released on February 27, 2026, while the new series of IIP data with base year 2022-23 will be released on May 28. MoSPI on Tuesday organised a pre-release consultative workshop on base revision of CPI, GDP and IIP. On inclusion of new data sources in CPI, the ministry said in addition to the data collected from physical outlets as being done i

Food deflation eases to -3.91%, rural inflation turns positive at 0.10%, but gold & silver surge above 58% keeps core elevated

Economists' projections ranged from 0.5 per cent on the lower end to 1 per cent, with the median projection at 0.7 per cent

A forward looking approach would prompt rate cut as H2 GDP growth likely to be softer

In rural India, retail prices slipped into deflationary zone with the NSO reporting a 0.25 per cent drop in the CPI (Rural), compared to a 1.07 per cent increase in September

Inflation could stay low for some time, but should be viewed with caution amid global risks and climate change

Pricing decisions rely on mathematical calculations. Over time, the practice has transitioned from a unitary method to probability

Housing is an important component of the CPI series as it has a weightage of 21.67 per cent in urban areas and 10.07 per cent at the all-India level in the current series

What India should aspire to be, a developed nation, an emerged nation, or an emerged market, is an important one, says Gupta