New Delhi: The Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation (MoSPI) has decided to carry out a comprehensive revision of the base year for three of India’s most-watched macro indicators—Gross Domestic Product (GDP), Consumer Price Index (CPI) and Index of Industrial Production (IIP)—in a move aimed at improving their relevance, accuracy and international comparability.
According to the ministry, the new CPI series will be released on February 12, 2026, followed by the new GDP series on February 27, 2026, while the revised IIP series is scheduled for May 2026. The timelines suggest that investors and policymakers could soon be working with a refreshed statistical framework for tracking growth, inflation and industrial activity.
What will change
The base-year revision will not be a mechanical update. Officials said the exercise will involve methodological improvements, incorporation of new data sources and updating of weights used in these indices. The process is being guided by Technical Advisory Committees comprising experts from academia, the Centre and states, and the RBI.
Such revisions are a standard statistical practice globally, reflecting changes in consumption patterns, production structures and the broader economy over time. For India, the update is also aimed at aligning the data series more closely with international best practices.
Why markets care
GDP, CPI and IIP are the backbone of macroeconomic decision-making—used by the RBI for monetary policy, by the government for fiscal planning, and by investors to price assets and assess economic momentum. A change in base year and methodology can restate historical growth and inflation numbers, sometimes altering the narrative around past cycles and sectoral contributions.
Both CPI and GDP series follow the IMF’s Special Data Dissemination Standards (SDDS), which emphasise coverage, periodicity, timeliness, public access, data integrity and quality—benchmarks the ministry says the new series will continue to meet.
What to watch next
Economists will be closely tracking how the revisions affect trend growth rates, inflation baskets and sectoral weights, especially in a period when services, digital activity and new-age industries are playing a larger role in the economy.
While the immediate impact will be statistical, the changes could influence policy signals, market expectations and cross-country comparisons once the new series become the reference point for India’s macro numbers.