Officials at Ashoka University announced on June 2, 2022 that they have established a first-of-its-kind Daily Food Price Index (DFPI) to measure inflation in retail and wholesale food markets in real time.
The existing Consumer Price Index (CPI) and Wholesale Price Index (WPI) are released on a monthly and yearly basis.
The recent increase in food costs as a result of the COVID-19 outbreak and the current unrest in Ukraine demonstrates the speed with which economic circumstances may evolve. In this context, having more real-time data at one’s disposal can help with prompt market interventions and price control choices, Ashwini Deshpande, Director of Ashoka University’s Centre for Economic Data & Analysis (CEDA), remarked
“A delay in data disclosure, and hence a delay in policymaking, typically comes at a cost. As a result, CEDA’s DFPI would be an excellent public resource for policymakers, scholars, and journalists “she continued.
Deshpande added that CEDA’s Daily Food Prices Tool is a tracker that allows users to watch inflation at a granular level in real time, since it includes retail and wholesale commodity prices for 22 important commodities for 179 locations across India.
Users of CEDA’s Daily Food Prices Tool can follow changes in particular commodities (such as mustard oil, atta, or masoor dal) or commodity groupings on a daily, weekly, or monthly basis (edible oils, grains or pulses etc). Users may construct rapid visualisations and download data by selecting various commodities, zones, or centres within zones.”CEDA produced the DFPI based on this data, which is available in two modes: daily and monthly. It enables for straightforward, query-based visualisations of the index for individual food products such as grains, pulses, edible oil, and vegetables. “At the commodity-centre-zone level, users may also get the underlying raw data,” she noted.