New Delhi, June 17 -- The Office of the Economic Adviser, Department for Promotion of Industry and Internal Trade, has just released a new series of wholesale price indices, along with an output producer price index, a trial input price index and selected service price indices. The release marks a major improvement in the availability of Indian price statistics.

The importance of these changes lies not merely in updated weights or a new base year. They offer a fundamentally richer view of how prices move through the economy.

The Wholesale Price Index (WPI) revision includes some technical changes in the method of index computation.

Among the major changes is a shift to using gross value of output instead of net traded value; this shift...