As India prepares to roll out a new Consumer Price Index (CPI) series, the relative weight of food in the inflation basket has shifted lower, reflecting changes in household consumption patterns captured in the rebasing exercise, according to details released by the Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation (MoSPI).
Under the new CPI series, food carries a weight of 34.77%, while beverages have a weight of 1.77%. The combined weight of food and beverages stands at 36.54%, compared with 45.86% in the existing 2012 CPI series.
On Thursday, January 29, MoSPI placed in the public domain the recommendations of an expert group tasked with revising the CPI base year from 2011-12 to 2023-24. The exercise is aimed at capturing changes in household consumption behaviour and aligning India’s inflation framework with global best practices.
According to the expert group report, the new CPI series, referred to as CPI 2024, is based on a basket of 358 weighted items, compared with 299 items in the current series. The updated basket reflects a changed composition of household spending, with relatively higher representation of services and non-food items.
SBI Research, in its latest Ecowrap, noted that applying the new weights to unchanged indices suggests that headline CPI inflation could be marginally higher by 20-30 basis points overall, while printing lower by a similar margin during periods of elevated food inflation.
The first CPI data under the new series will be released on February 12, 2026, with index data from January 2025 onwards and inflation data for January 2026. Back-series data for rural, urban and combined indices from January 2013 will also be released on the same date.
Food prices have historically been the largest contributor to volatility in retail inflation, and the updated CPI series reflects changes in consumption patterns captured through the rebasing exercise.
