Government to unveil revamped Core I
The Office of the Economic Adviser will release the revised series of Core Industries Index (ICI) with base year 2022-23 on July 20, replacing the existing series with base year 2011-12. This aligns the ICI with other key macroeconomic indicators such as Gross Domestic Product (GDP), Wholesale Price Index (WPI) and Index of Industrial Production (IIP), for which 2022-23 has already been adopted as the common base year.
The ICI is compiled on a monthly basis and will be available for the month of June 2026, as well as for the trailing series for the 38 months from April 2023 to May 2026.
The revised series expands the ICI basket from eight to nine key industries by including iron ore, taking into account its intensive use in the production process and its contribution to industrial growth.
The existing eight industries – coal, crude oil, natural gas, refinery products, fertilizers, steel, cement and power – have all been retained in the new series.
Following earlier practice, the weights of the ICI (2022-23) series have been taken from the Index of Industrial Production (IIP) 2022-23 series released by the Ministry of Statistics and Program Implementation. The weights of ICI basket items (taken from IIP) are proportionally distributed to 100 to finalize the item basket weights. With this revision, the combined weight of nine core industries in the IIP basket has increased to 32.88 per cent, while the combined weight of eight core industries in the 2011-12 series was 40.27 per cent.
To ensure consistency with IIP, gross production data will now be used for compilation of steel index in the new series, replacing net production data used in the 2011-12 series.
Only raw coal is retained in the new ICI series, coal middling and washed coal are excluded to remove double counting, as both are derived from raw coal.
