OTT platforms, air & rail portals to be part of new inflation series as MoSPI taps new data sources

Data from over-the-top (OTT) platforms and online portals for airfare and rail fare could soon be part of India's inflation basket. India's statistics ministry is exploring tapping into alternative data sources such as online platforms for air and rail fares, OTT services, and administrative records for price data for petrol, diesel and LPG for the new Consumer Price Index (CPI) series, Saurabh Garg, Secretary, Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation (MoSPI) told The Indian Express in an interview.
The new CPI series, which is expected to come out from the first quarter of 2026, is also likely to directly incorporate data from Indian Railway Catering and Tourism Corporation (IRCTC) and Petroleum Planning and Analysis Cell (PPAC).
'For the new CPI series, MoSPI is expanding its approach by exploring alternative data sources, such as online platforms for airfare, rail fare, OTT platforms and administrative records for price data of petrol, diesel and LPG. Discussions are ongoing with IRCTC, under the Ministry of Railways, and the PPAC under the Ministry of Petroleum and Natural Gas for direct transfer of data for integration in CPI,' Garg said.
The Ministry is also exploring the use of scanner data and web scraping with an aim to enhance the accuracy, efficiency and comprehensiveness of price data collection, Garg said. 'The possibility of collecting price data from e-commerce websites is also being considered,' he added.
The Ministry is currently undertaking a base revision exercise for all major datasets such as CPI-based inflation, Index of Industrial Production (IIP) and Gross Domestic Product (GDP). For GDP, the new series is scheduled to be released on February 27, 2026 with financial year 2022-23 as the new base year, Garg said.
The revised base year for IIP has also been tentatively identified as 2022 -23, Garg said, adding that the IIP with the revised base would be released from 2026-27. At present, the base year for GDP and IIP is 2011-12 and for CPI is 2012.
For CPI, 2024 has been identified as the revised base year. '…the item basket and the weightage of the items would be decided based on the NSO's Household Consumer Expenditure Survey (HCES) conducted in 2023-24. The new CPI series is expected to be published from the first quarter of 2026,' Garg said.
Among other alternative datasets being tapped by the Ministry, Garg said data of Goods and Services Tax (GST), e-Vahan portal, UPI transactions from NPCI are going to be used for GDP calculation by the National Statistics Office (NSO) in addition to the use of data from Office of Controller General of Accounts (CGA), MCA-21, RBI. MoSPI has also used the GSTN (GST Network) database for its new service sector survey, Annual Survey of Service Sector Enterprises (ASSSE).
The latest HCES for 2023-24 had incorporated questions on streaming services, air fare and rail fare. At present, the retail inflation basket based on CPI (Combined) has a weight of 0.077 percent for air fare (economy class), 0.185 per cent for railway fare, 2.187 per cent for petrol for vehicles and 0.148 per cent for diesel for vehicles. There's a 0.08 per cent weightage for internet expenses, 0.82 per cent weight for monthly charges for cable TV connection, and 1.839 per cent for mobile phone charges.

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