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Informist, Monday, Jan. 19, 2026

 

--MoSPI sources: Rural housing may get 4-5% weightage in new CPI series

--MoSPI sources: To exclude govt accommodation from housing index in new CPI

--MoSPI sources:To publish item-wise weights of new CPI by end-Jan, early-Feb

By Shubham Rana

 

NEW DELHI – The new Consumer Price Index series, with 2024 as the base year, will include rural areas in the housing component with a weightage of around 4-5%, according to officials in the Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation.

 

The new CPI series is scheduled to be released on Feb. 12, marking the first revision of the index in 11 years. Ahead of the release, the ministry will publish the item-wise weightages either by the end of January or in early February.

 

"We have not finalised when to release the weights, but we will definitely make them public before Feb. 12," a ministry official said. The ministry will also release the final report containing the recommendations of the technical advisory committee by the end of January or early February, the official said.

 

This will be the first time that rural housing is included in the CPI. The current CPI series, which has 2012 as the base year, includes only urban areas in the housing component, as only a small portion of homes are rented in rural areas.

 

In the existing CPI, housing has a weight of 21.67% in urban areas and 10.07% at the all-India level. These weights were derived from the Household Consumption Expenditure Survey 2011-12 (Jul-Jun). The weights for the new CPI series will be based on the Household Consumption Expenditure Survey 2023-24 (Aug-Jul).

 

According to the latest consumption survey, rural households spent 0.56% of their monthly per capita consumption expenditure on rent in 2023-24, slightly higher than 0.45% in 2011-12. In urban areas, households spent 6.58% of their total monthly expenditure on rent in 2023-24, up from 6.24% in 2011-12.

 

"Actual rural rent is less, but this time we are also taking imputed rent. So, we are calculating rural inflation using both these," the official said. "Based on this, rural housing weight is around 4-5%."

 

To calculate rural housing inflation, the ministry will collect rental data from six dwellings every month. "We had earlier tried collecting data from 12 dwellings in rural areas, but such houses were difficult to find, so we reduced it to six," the official said.

 

The ministry will exclude government accommodation and other employer-provided dwellings from the housing component of the new CPI series, officials said. "We are not taking such dwellings this time. In the current series, several times we saw a fall in rent when a senior officer left the house and a junior-level officer started staying there," a second ministry official said. "This created noise in the data, which we called unexplainable. To avoid this, we are not taking such dwellings in the new series."

 

The inclusion of rural housing and the exclusion of employer-provided accommodation are expected to present a more accurate picture of housing inflation in India. According to the statistics ministry's data, CPI housing inflation has remained below 6% for the past seven years. However, several private surveys suggest that house rents have risen sharply over the past few years, with increases significantly higher than those reflected in the CPI.  End

 

Edited by Avishek Dutta

 

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