 NEW DELHI: Though households in India are spending more on cooking gas-—thanks to new restrictions on the number of subsidised cylinders that families can buy—the increase is not yet showing up in inflation numbers as government statisticians are still racking their brains on how to incorporate it. What has made the task more complicated is that cap on non-subsidised cylinders could vary for different states and sections. This problem could also end up further delaying a revision of the wholesale price-based inflation index. The government, as part of its subsidy reforms, had capped the number of subsidised cylinders per household to six in September 2012. A non-subsidised cylinder now costs Rs 942, compared with Rs 399 for a subsidised one. Some states have raised the cap on their own, taking on the additional burden. The Centre, for its part, had raised the cap to nine this January. While consumer price indexbased inflation has been in double digits for three months, it may still not be reflecting the true picture as it has not yet accounted for the non-subsidised cylinders. CPI for February stood at 10.91%. In CPI, the fuel and light component has about 10% share in the index. "Incorporating the non-subsidised LPG data will be complex as each state has different cap. Most likely only the non-subsidised categories will be included in the new series, but again it will not be an easy task," said an official at ministry of statistics and programme implementation, requesting anonymity. "These caps may fluctuate with the change in governments, further complicating the process." On an average, a household in India consumes 15 cylinders a year, of which nine are subsidised. These nine will have a separate weight from the remaining six. "What we may do is look at the annual average consumption per household and see how much of it exceeds the threshold limit and assign a different weight to it," the official explained. Pronab Sen, chairman of National Statistical Commission and former chief statistician, said the effect of non-subsidised LPG price on the CPI will be substantial. Sen, however, said capturing specific state data will not be much of a problem in CPI, as data is based on specific states and later compiled for the national numbers. The February numbers of wholesale price inflation were adjusted for the increase in LPG and diesel prices over the past few months. The LPG increase saw the index rise to 186 points from 153.6 points in January. Similarly, high speed diesel was adjusted from 193 points in January to 200 points in February. However, Sen said, in the case of the new index, separate categories will have to be created for both bulk diesel and retail diesel and the same for LPG. "Such segregation is anyways there for food products sold under Public Distribution System and market price, which have different price levels," he said. The WPI is being revised from 2004-05 base to 2009-10 by a committee headed by Planning Commission member Saumitra Chaudhuri, which is supposed to come out with the revised index by May.  via Business - Google News http://news.google.com/news/url?sa=t&fd=R&usg=AFQjCNFvRCuAei4ZEvFYfwaNW0-nwPjldA&url=http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/business/india-business/Non-subsidised-cylinders-yet-to-be-added-in-inflation-numbers/articleshow/19317036.cms | |||
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Sunday, 31 March 2013
Non-subsidised cylinders yet to be added in inflation numbers - Times of India
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