AICPIN-FAQ 4 16. How frequently are prices collected and for which varieties? For each of the selected items, normally, one variety was selected for regular price collection on the presumption that it will reflect price trend of all the varieties of the item. Efforts were made to fix variety in a detailed manner so that it could be easily identified by the price collector over time. Similarly, for each item a unit was fixed after consulting shopkeepers and local people who could represent majority transactions of the working class. The list of items retained for price collection had been divided into 3 main categories, on the basis of frequency of price collection namely, weekly, monthly and six monthly. In the weekly price schedule items such as cereals, vegetables, oils, etc., are covered where prices are sensitive and vary frequently. Prices of items like cinema, furniture, utensils, household appliances, transport etc. are collected once in a month as their prices do not change very frequently. Prices of all types of clothing and footwear items covered are also collected once in a month for the same reason. The prices of items like house-rent, school/college fees, school/college books are collected once in six months/year. For all the items prices are collected on a fixed price collection day and time (in case of perishable items) every week/month. The day for this purpose had been fixed after considering the extent of transactions taken place on various days in the week and views of the State Governments. 17. How is it ensured that prices collected are reasonably correct? The State Government employees who are locally posted and normally belong to Department/Bureau of Economics and Statistics or Labour Department collect these prices 9 from the selected markets. For each market, a separate Price Collector has been appointed who does this job on part time basis and receives honorarium from Labour Bureau for this work. They have been provided detailed instructions in this regard. The middle rank officers of the State Governments under whom the Price Collectors work have normally been appointed as Price Supervisors for a group of markets. These Price Supervisors have been instructed to pay visits to the selected market to keep watch on work of Price Collectors and send his/her detailed monthly report directly to the Labour Bureau. Over and above this arrangement, Labour Bureau has posted field staff in its four Regional Offices at Ahmedabad, Kanpur, Kolkata, Chennai and one sub-regional office at Mumbai, who regularly visit the markets, guide the Price Collectors and Price Supervisors in price collection work, verify prices from the concerned shop-keepers and send their detailed reports to the Headquarter at Shimla. At the Headquarter, the prices received are examined for inter-period, inter-shop, inter-market and inter-centre variations. All doubtful points are referred to the field for verification and confirmation. Thus, it would be clear that three levels checking of the prices are done before finally adopting them. Moreover, prices are adjusted for quality as well as quantity variations with reference to the specifications fixed in base year before utilising them in the index. Prices for some essential items are also published in the monthly publication of Labour Bureau, the Indian Labour Journal. In addition, it has been made known to the index users that they can visit Regional Office of the Labour Bureau for verifying the prices collected at any time. But the lists of shops from which prices are collected are not made known to the users so as to avoid non-cooperation of shop-keepers and industrial disputes of workers and employers on the prices collected. For the same reason, representatives of workers and employers are not associated in price collection work. All methodological issues relating to utilisation of prices are invariably decided in consultation with the TAC of Government of India. 18. How are ration prices utilized in the index? There are two situations prevailing in the country at present. In some centres of West Bengal such as Kolkata, Howrah, Statutory rationing is in force i.e. the sale of ration items in the open market has been banned. In such cases, only ration prices are utilised in the index and no account is taken of unauthorised or black market prices. However, when supply of cereals through ration shops falls short of the requirement of an average family, corrective action as approved by TAC is applied which involves distributing the portion of weight of the item-corresponding to short-fall among all other food items pro-rata. 10 In many other centres, informal rationing is in force which implies that ration items are available freely in the open market also, in such cases, so far Labour Bureau had been giving weight to the ration price on the basis of admissibility of supplies by rationing authorities but for the new series, the ration prices are weighted with the actual availability of the ration items in selected ration shops. This is an improvement over the old practice as it better reflects actual consumption of working class and supplies actually made available by the Government. For working out actual availability, opening balance at the beginning of the month is added to the quantity received during the month for each ration item and divided by number of units registered with the ration shop. This availability provides the weight for ration price and rest of the requirement of an average family provides weight for open market price. These weights are worked out at the shop level and then averaged to get market level weights. For each market, separate weighted price is worked out for each ration item. These prices are then averaged to get the centre-weighted prices for each ration item. No adjustment is made in ration price for quality variations with open market price as it is not possible because of involvement of subsidy element. 19. What is the procedure for compiling housing index? The practice under the old series on base 1960=100 was to revise the index for housing group twice in a year i.e., in January and July on the basis of half-yearly house rent survey conducted in the preceding half-year in respect of rented houses only. But housing index was being kept frozen at 100 in mining and plantation centres in view of predominantly free and owned houses there. However, in the subsequent series on base 1982=100 and 2001=100, actual rents of rented houses and comparable rents of owned houses are collected in the course of half-yearly house-rent surveys and zero rent issued for free houses. For compiling the housing index, three separate indices are compiled for free, rented and owned houses which are combined using weights, which are proportions of families residing in three categories of houses. For half-yearly house-rent survey, a sample of dwelling is drawn from the sample covered under the family budget enquiries and is normally kept fixed in the life of the series. In no centre less than 84 dwellings have been selected for these surveys. The housing index is compiled by Chain Base Method, in which rent movements are compared with the last six monthly periods and not with the base period as this method better takes care of depreciation aspect of housing. Expenditure incurred on minor repairs of the sample dwellings by the workers is also accounted for working out rent index. New houses are notincluded in the sample as it is felt that relative movement of rents in new houses is not going 11 to be different from that of old houses. Moreover, coverage of new houses in the sample canresult in operational problems. 20. Which prices are used for items available only in particular seasons? A particular fruit/vegetable is priced during the availability period only which is determined after studying the prices of two to three years from different markets of the centre. For off-season months, the weight for a particular item is distributed to the corresponding fruits/vegetables section in the months concerned. Therefore, in respect of fruits and vegetables the weighting pattern change every month, depending upon their availability and thus avoiding the need of estimating prices for the off-season months. This is also an improvement over the earlier practice where only such items were priced which were available throughout the year. For some other items like cold drinks, maize atta, umbrella, blanket etc., which are also sometimes not available throughout the year, no monthly pattern has been prepared but the problem is dealt with in the same manner whenever the prices are not available for these items. Source:www.labour bureau.nic.in Share and Care For Latest Updates Always visit http://satish24k.blogspot.in For Beautiful Wallpapers Always visit http://24ksatish.blogspot.in |
Print
PDF
For Further Reading,
About the Author
0 comments:
Post a Comment