Wholesale price index

The Wholesale Price Index (WPI) is the price of a representative basket of wholesale goods. Some countries (like India and The Philippines) use WPI changes as a central measure of inflation. However, United States now report a producer price index instead.

The Wholesale Price Index or WPI is "the price of a representative basket of wholesale goods. Some countries use the changes in this index to measure inflation in their economies, in particular India – The Indian WPI figure was earlier released weekly on every Thursday and influenced stock and fixed price markets. The Indian WPI is now updated on a monthly basis. The Wholesale Price Index focuses on the price of goods traded between corporations, rather than goods bought by consumers, which is measured by the Consumer Price Index. The purpose of the WPI is to monitor price movements that reflect supply and demand in industry, manufacturing and construction. This helps in analyzing both macroeconomic and microeconomic conditions.

Calculation

The wholesale price index (WPI) is based on the wholesale price of a few relevant commodities of over 240 commodities available. The commodities chosen for the calculation are based on their importance in the region and the point of time the WPI is employed. For example in India about 435 items were used for calculating the WPI in base year 1993-94 while the advanced base year 2004-05 uses 676 items. The indicator tracks the price movement of each commodity individually. Based on this individual movement, the WPI is determined through the averaging principle. The following methods are used to compute the WPI:

Laspeyres Formula

It is the weighted arithmetic mean based on the fixed value-based weights for the base period.

Ten-Day Price Index

Under this method, “sample prices” with high intra-month fluctuations are selected and surveyed every ten days through phone. Utilizing the data retrieved by this procedure and with the assumption that other non-surveyed “sample prices” remain unchanged, a “ten-day price index” is compiled and released.

Calculation Method

Monthly price indexes are compiled by calculating the simple arithmetic mean of three ten- day “sample prices” in the month.

See also

• Consumer price index
• Monetary Union Index of Consumer Prices
• Producer price index
• Price index
• Inflation