The Government will release the first all India retail inflation data tomorrow. This will help reflect retail price movement better. Inflation has been calculated on the basis of Wholesale Price Index – WPI as the bench mark. This measures the price changes from the production side and not from the consumption side. Therefore it gave a skewed picture on the price rise. This bench mark was used for Government's decisions and RBI's monetary policy.

Experts said, WPI poorly reflected the cost of living because it does not focus on the prices at which the consumer is purchasing the goods. Globally also the consumer price index is taken as the main benchmark.
They say, the new nation-wide Consumer Price Index – CPI will eventually replace the whole sale price based calculation.

The new data will be prepared by the Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation. Besides, three more retail price indices — for agricultural labourers, rural labourers and industrial workers — will also be prepared by the Ministry of Labour.