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The Office of the Economic Adviser, DPIIT (Ministry of Commerce & Industry) released provisional Service Producer Price Indices for Q1 of FY 2026-27 and final indices for Q4 of FY 2025-26, both on base year 2022-23.
The Air (Passenger) Service Price Index rose from 106.9 in Q4 FY 2025-26 to 126.4 in Q1 FY 2026-27 - a year-on-year inflation of 31.94 per cent, the sharpest movement among the seven services; Management of Pension Funds rose from 103.8 to 113.3 (5.20 per cent YoY), while Insurance and Telecom were flat.
The release states that no weights have been assigned across the seven services because they do not cover the entire services sector; sub-service level weights within each service were computed from FY 2022-23 data. Q2 FY 2026-27 indices are due on 25 November 2026.
A PPI measures the average change in prices received by domestic producers for their output, at the factory or service-provider gate, before trade margins, transport costs and indirect taxes are added. The Wholesale Price Index, by contrast, tracks prices at the wholesale transaction stage and so carries some of those margins and taxes inside it, and double-counts goods that pass through several stages of production. PPI is the internationally preferred producer-side inflation measure; the Working Group on WPI revision was specifically mandated to examine PPI methodology and recommend a roadmap for switching over from WPI to PPI. A Service PPI extends the same idea to services, where output has no physical wholesale market at all - which is why services were historically absent from India's WPI even though services make up the largest share of gross value added.
Simple Analogy: WPI reads the price tag in the wholesale market, after the middleman has added his cut and the tax has been stamped on. PPI reads the price the factory itself was paid at the gate. Service PPI asks the same gate question of a bank, an airline or a telecom company, which never had a wholesale market to read a tag from.
Compiles the Wholesale Price Index, the Output Producer Price Index, the trial Input Producer Price Index and the Service Producer Price Index; publishes WPI monthly and Service PPI quarterly on eaindustry.nic.in
Parent department of the OEA; also handles industrial policy, FDI policy, Startup India and Invest India; formerly the Department of Industrial Policy and Promotion, renamed DPIIT in 2019
Compiles the Consumer Price Index, the Index of Industrial Production and the National Accounts - the consumer side and output side of official statistics, as distinct from the OEA's producer-side price work
| Aspect | WPI | CPI | Service PPI |
|---|---|---|---|
| Compiled by | Office of the Economic Adviser, DPIIT | National Statistical Office, MoSPI | Office of the Economic Adviser, DPIIT |
| Current base year | 2022-23 (new series released 15 June 2026, replacing 2011-12) | 2024 (new series released 12 February 2026, replacing 2012) | 2022-23 |
| Frequency | Monthly | Monthly | Quarterly |
| Whose prices | Wholesale transaction prices of goods | Retail prices paid by households - rural, urban and combined | Prices received by producers of seven services |
| Services covered | No services in the goods basket | Services included - 50 service items in the 2024 series | Banking, Securities Transaction, Insurance, Pension Fund Management, Railways, Air (Passenger), Telecom |
| Policy use | Producer-side inflation and deflators | The RBI's anchor under the flexible inflation targeting framework | Producer-side services inflation and services deflators |
The RBI's flexible inflation targeting framework is anchored on CPI headline inflation, not on WPI or PPI - a standard exam trap, since WPI is the older and more frequently quoted series.
Services contribute the largest share of India's gross value added, yet WPI covers only goods. Service PPI is the first systematic producer-side price measurement of Indian services and is meant to feed better services deflators into the national accounts.
HCES 2023-24 supplied the weights for the CPI 2024 series - the same survey that underpins consumption and poverty estimates.
The annexure carries no year-on-year figure for the Air (Passenger) index before Q1 FY 2026-27, so the 31.94 per cent reading is the first full-year comparison available for that service on the 2022-23 base.
GS Paper 3 > Indian Economy > Inflation and Price Indices
General Awareness > Inflation, Price Indices and RBI Policy
General Awareness > Indian Economy
General Awareness > Current Affairs and Economy
Price indices and base-year revisions are a near-annual feature in Prelims and in banking general awareness.
Quarterly index of prices received by producers of seven services, compiled by the Office of the Economic Adviser, DPIIT, on base year 2022-23.
The reference year set equal to 100 against which index values are measured, revised periodically so that basket and weights reflect the current structure of the economy.
Provisional (P) figures are first estimates from incomplete data returns; final (F) figures are published once the full data set is received - here, one quarter later.
Index of prices received by producers for their output, released alongside the revised WPI series on 15 June 2026.