(23 May 2022) Government Data Roundup: Report on Management of Foreign Exchange Reserves, CPI, WPI are among the data released recently - FACTLY
Sai Krishna Muthyanolla
May 23, 2022
In the third & latest edition of the ‘Government Data Roundup’, we cover RBI’s report on management of foreign exchange reserves, Third Advance estimates for production of Major crops, latest PLFS quarterly bulletin, CPI & WPI reports, IIP reports, RBI’s monthly bulletin.
The third edition of the fortnightly government data roundup covers report of RBI on foreign exchange reserves, the State of Inequality in India report, the periodic labour force survey Quarterly bulletin, advance estimates of food grain production, Consumer Price Index, Wholesale Price Index, and Index of industrial production.
In addition to the above reports, two releases by the Government during the last fortnight are of prime importance. The first release by the Government is by the Ministry of Youth and Affairs and Sports. It invited comments for the new draft National Youth Policy 2021. For a country with a significant young demographic, this draft National Youth Policy (NYP) assumes importance in unlocking the potential of the youth and ensure their overall development. For more information on the draft NYP, Factly’s review on draft NYP can be read here.
The second important release by the government is the launch of National Data and Analytics Platform (NDAP) by NITI Aayog. The primary objective of the platform is to democratize the access to the public data by making it interoperable, available, interactive, and accessible to common public. All the data sets hosted on this platform are converted to a standard format, making it easier for cross-sectoral analysis and dataset merging. This enables for an easier analysis and visualization of the data.
Brief about the report/data:
This half-yearly review report presents a detailed picture of the country’s overall foreign exchange reserves. It is a go-to document to find all the related information about the movement of foreign exchange reserves. Foreign exchange reserves are categorized into Foreign Currency Assets (FCA), Gold, Special Drawing Rights (SDR), and Reserve Tranche Position (RTP) in International Monetary Fund (IMF).
This report also contains the objectives of Reserve Management, the associated legal framework, risk management practices and Transparency and disclosure.
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Brief about the report:
This report aims to comprehensively study the state of inequality in India. The report is divided into two thematic parts each dealing with distinct aspects of inequality. The first part deals with the economic facets and the second part deals with the socio-economic manifestations. Both combinedly look at five key areas that influence inequality – health, education, income distribution, labour market dynamics, and household characteristics.
One important aspect of this report is that it acknowledges the intersectionality of class, gender, and region, in studying the impacts of inequality on the society.
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The agriculture crop year extends from July to June, where different activities relating to production takes place. The actual estimates of production and yield are available only after the final harvest. However, to take policy decisions regarding import and exports, pricing, marketing, and distribution etc., an advance estimate of production is done, and released at five different time-periods during the crop year.
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CPI measures the changes in the price level of goods and services that are consumed in a household. It has a fixed basket of goods and services that includes Food and Beverages; Pan, tobacco, and intoxicants; clothing and footwear; housing; fuel and light, and miscellaneous. Each of these categories have weights assigned to them. Along with this, the Consumer Food Price Index (CFPI) is also measured, which is the change in prices of food products consumed by the population. The base year had been changed from 2010 to 2012, from 2015 onwards and the data is collected from 1181 village markets and 1114 urban markets across the country. It is a Laspeyre’s index, which is calculated as, CPI – (Total cost of fixed basket of goods and services in a particular period*100)/ (Total cost of fixed basket of goods & services in base period)
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Brief about the index:
It is the average change in the prices of wholesale commodities. The index basket comprises of three categories – Primary Articles (117 items, 22.62% of total weight), fuel and power (16 items, 13.15% of total weight) and manufactured products (564 items, 64.23% of total weight). The weights accorded to each category is based on value of production adjusted for net imports. The base year for this index is 2011-12. It is important to note that WPI does not include services. It focuses on the prices of goods that are traded between the organizations and not with the goods bought by consumers. WPI is also known as ‘headline inflation rate’ in India.
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This index measures the changes in the level of industrial production in the economy. It indicates the mood of the industrial activity in the country. The base year for this index is 2011-12, and it is assigned a value of 100. While the annual survey of industries gives a complete and detailed picture about the industrial activity, this index gives the short-term analysis regarding the industrial performance. The data for this index is sourced from 14 different agencies like the Indian Bureau of mines, coffee board, tea board, central electricity authority and so on.
For the purpose of this index, industrial production is categorized into three sectors – Mining (14.2%), Manufacturing (75.5%), and Electricity (10.3%). The values in the brackets denote their relative weights. Alternatively, there is also a ‘use-based’ classification of goods – primary goods (34.05%), capital goods (8.22%), intermediate goods (17.22%), infrastructure goods (12.34%), consumer durables (12.84%), and consumer non-durables (15.33%).
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The Reserve Bank of India publishes its Bulletin every month. This bulletin usually consists of the speeches of the RBI Governor and Deputy Governors, along with the Monitory Policy Statement for the fiscal year, articles about issues that impact Indian economy, and the latest statistics regarding the micro and macro-economic indicators of Indian economy.
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