Quoting official sources economic daily, Business Line reported that a working group headed by Prof Abhijit Sen of the Jawaharlal Nehru University was expected to submit its report on a revised WPI series to the government by December.

The working group is expected to recommend a new base year, which could be 1999-2000, 2000-2001 or 2001-02 to replace the existing WPI with 1993-1994 as the base year. The group has also been entrusted to assign new weights to each commodity the weekly price movement of which are reckoned in computing the index of the wholesale prices.

It would examine certain analytical issues to "introduce the best international practices in price index compilation."

India is probably among a few countries, said officials, which use the WPI as the headline indicator for measuring inflation.

For the purpose most advanced countries use the consumer price index (CPI) covering all goods entering the final consumption basket keeping intermediate or investments goods out.

India too has CPIs, but for consumer segments like industrial workers, agricultural labourers and non-manual employees, they said.