MoSPI is in talks with the Department for Promotion of Industry and Internal Trade (DPIIT) and the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) regarding this inclusion, a senior official told ET. The discussions with ecommerce companies are focused on how the data will be shared without compromising business strategies.
“There should be no negative impact on business and customer privacy,” the official said.
The revised CPI series will have 2024 as the base year, replacing 2012, as reported by ET earlier. The weights of items in the index will be derived from the Household Consumption Expenditure Survey (HCES) 2022-23 (August-July). The CPI currently tracks 299 items across 1,181 rural markets and 1,114 urban ones.
The inclusion will help improve the coverage of inflation and make it more robust and accurate as online accounts for 7% of household purchases (11% urban, 3.6% rural), which will better reflect changing consumer behavior, said Paras Jasrai, senior economic analyst at India Ratings and Research.”Also, since consumers in urban areas have high ecommerce spending, it may have a higher influence on CPI compared to earlier,” he said.India’s ecommerce sector is projected to touch $550 billion by 2030 from $105 billion in 2023, according to a joint report by Anarock and ETRetail.
The report highlighted that the share of online shoppers in tier 2 and 3 cities increased to 56% in FY24 from 46% in FY20.
Content Source: economictimes.indiatimes.com