Overview

• MoSPI Secretary Saurabh Garg confirmed that the new Consumer Price Index series, due early 2026, will draw on online airfare and rail bookings, OTT platform data and administrative fuel price records
• The revision will update base years to 2022-23 for GDP and IIP and to 2024 for CPI while reshaping the goods and services basket based on the latest household consumption survey
• Chief Economic Advisor V Anantha Nageswaran urged “intelligent integration” of alternate and official data and warned that AI and IoT tools require robust governance frameworks to prevent bias and privacy breaches
• NITI Aayog Vice-Chairman Suman Bery questioned whether MoSPI or specialized think tanks such as NCAER should lead the work on integrating unconventional data sets
• On the workshop’s opening day, MoSPI released EnviStats India, 2025: Environment Statistics to expand environmental inputs for policy formulation