On Thursday, the government released partial figures of wholesale price-based inflation for the month of April. The government said that due to the coronavirus outbreak in April, there has been limited transaction of products due to lockdown. According to the data released by the Ministry of Commerce and Industry, the Wholesale Price Index (WPI) in primary articles had a deflation (contraction) of 0.79 per cent in April. Whereas in March there was an inflation of 3.27 percent. When we talk about fuel and electricity in the wholesale price index in April, a contraction of 10.12 percent has been recorded. Whereas in the previous month, 1.76 percent contraction was seen.
"It has been decided to release the price movement of select subgroups/groups of WPI only in April 2020 due to limited transaction of products in the wholesale market due to Corona virus outbreak," it said in an official statement. The statement said that WPI calculations of all commodities cannot be done for April 2020 due to non-availability of manufactured product group index.
Apart from this, the statement said that the price indices of primary commodities have been calculated on the basis of market prices of agricultural products. The price indices of major groups like fuel and power have been calculated based on the price data taken from the Ministry of Petroleum and Natural Gas, selected public sector undertakings and offices of Coal Controller and Central Electricity Authority. For April 2020, the price indices of these two major groups (primary commodities and fuel and electricity) have been released along with standard procedures.
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