Dearness Allowance linked to Consumer Price Index against inflation

Dearness Allowance linked to Consumer Price Index against inflation

General Secretary of Confederation for Karnataka State Shri P.S.Prasad has written an article on his blog about the Consumer Price Index for the purpose of calculating Dearness allowance to Central Government employees and Pensioners...

The detailed report of article has been reproduced and given below for your information...

DA & CPI UNDER ATTACK

The Consumer Price Index is the main base for calculation of Dearness Allowance for the Central Government and State Government Employees and also the Industrial and Bank Employees.

The Consumer Price Index (CPI) is calculated using following steps:

a) Market prices are collected for 252 items by the Officials of Department of Statics and Department of Posts. These prices of that item & place are sent to Central processing unit from 78 centres all over India ( which are enclosed for your reference).

b) The all India weights given the each category of items such as food 49.71%, housing 9.77 %, fuel 9.49% , footwear O.68%, transportation 7.5%, Medical 5.31%, Personnel care 2.92 % & Miscellaneous 26.31% total 100% . CPI points are determined using this all India weights and prices of the 252 items. (which are enclosed for your reference).

Now from the angle of Employees point of view following changes in all India weights should be brought.

a) Housing should be given as 15% instead of just 9.77 %.

b) Medical should be increased to 15% from 5.31 %.

c) The Miscellaneous items should be reduced to just 5% instead of 26.31 %

The prices have risen by over 200% in last 61/2 years, whereas the CPI has shown an increase from 115 points in Jan 2006 to 235 points in July 2013 that means an increase of 120 points and the actual DA is only 92%. There is fault in the calculation of CPI itself apart from present DA formula , as undue all India weights is given for some items such as miscellaneous items such as 26% whatever increase in prices of the food, fuel, transportation, housing are nullified by these 26% decrease in prices or marginal increase in miscellaneous items.

The Employees are not getting the right DA and thus they are not compensated by the real increase in prices which are used for daily needs.

A new series for the calculation of the Consumer Price Index is under preparation by the Government of India. For this purpose, Government has set up a Standing Tripartite Committee (STC) to advise the Government on issues pertaining to the Consumer Price Index for Industrial Workers (New Series).

There are two aspects in this move we should be doubly carefull.

1) There is vast difference between the real price increase and CPI thus an Employee is deprived of the real DA.

2) The Government of India is thinking that the CPI is bloated or wrong that has made burden on the financial burden on them hence it wants to reduce its expenditure by modifying the CPI as a result of this what DA we used to get 10% half yearly and this year by 20%, this can be avoided by next year, hence it is seriously considering the aspect of revising the All India weights of many items such as food which is at 59% to 30%. By this the whole CPI increase will be limited to just 8 to 9 points in a year rather than 25 points in a year by this we get only 3 to 4 % DA every six months rather than 10% DA which we are used to get due to high inflation and drastic rise in prices.

Now the statements issued by Government of India officials ie Reserve Bank Governor Shri D.Subbarao & Shri Kaushik Basu, Chief Economic Advisor, Ministry of Finance, which is enclosed indicate this stand. Instead of employees friendly CPI they want a Government of India friendly CPI.

The wages of CG employees are determined by principle of need based minimum wages as per table 2.21 of 6th CPC report where in only a few items are chosen rather than 252 items chosen by CPI.

I request one and all to be serious about this issue otherwise the Employees will suffer in a long run regarding wrong calculation of CPI and DA issue.

Comradely yours

(P.S.Prasad)

General Secretary

9480066620.

Please find enclosures ;

Ministry of Labour and Employment, Government of India has decided to prepare a new series of Consumer Price Index for Industrial Workers.

For this purpose, Government has set up a Standing Tripartite Committee (STC) to advise the Government on issues pertaining to the Consumer Price Index for Industrial Workers (New Series).

The STC will go into details of various parameters that are taken into consideration for updation of the base year such as the weighting diagram. consumption basket, selection of centres, sample size of establishments for price collection etc.

Government has no specific information about the skilled/semi-skilled worker outsourced by the Central Government /State Governments through contractors not being paid as per the CPI.

However, the Contract Labour Act, 1970 inter-alia, contains provisions for payment of wages to these category of workers.

The contract workers are also entitled to receive minimum wages as notified by the appropriate Governments from time to time.

This information was given by Minister of State for Labour & Employment Shri Kodikurinil Suresh in the Lok Sabha today in reply to a written question.

MUMBAI: The new series of consumer price index (CPI) is not enough for a robust statistical analysis of prices, Reserve Bank Governor D Suhharao said on Friday.

He also said the new CPI has an excess focus on food prices, which has a 50% weight. House rents, which account for 10%, are also a cause for concern given doubts over the efficacy of the prices, he added.

“The new CPI has only 19 data points which is not sufficient for a statistically robust analysis,” Subbarao, who demits office on September 5, said while speaking at the Statistics Day conference at the RBI headquarters here.

Dearness allowance link brings retail inflation figures under cloud

SMRITI SETH, ET Bureau Jul 19, 2011. 0347am 1ST.

http:/Iarticles.econom ictimes.indiatim es.com/20 11-07-1 9/news129790925_1 _cpi-iwretail-inflation-wpi-ancl-cpi

NEW DELHI There could be a systemic over-estimation of the retail inflation as measured by the consumer price index for industrial workers, or CPI-1W, as it forms the basis for revision in the dearness allowance of central government employees.

This retail measure of inflation has generally shown a wide divergence with the widely followed wholesale price index (WPI) inflation. “Since the people who collect data for the CPI get their salaries indexed by the same index it actually feeds into some tendency to bloat that,” said Kaushik Basu, Chief Economic Advisor, Ministry of Finance. The CPI-IW is compiled by the Labour Bureau and investigators are employed by state governments - directorate of economics and statistics - to collect the prices.

The index is used to decide the dearness allowance of central government employees, which creates the incentive for bloating up the index. ‘We have found a couple of items that occur in both the WPI and CPI collected by different agencies. We are now tracking these two to see it there is any bias in them. But there are no results as yet,” Basu said. “A team at the ministry of finance is looking at various aspects of inflation, this is one thing we are indeed looking at,” he said. The labour bureau has strongly denied any such possibility and insisted there was no form of manipulation whatsoever.

“Our system is fool proof, there are multiple levels of checks. There is no bias in the data collected,” said an official at the Labour Bureau. Even experts are skeptical of the possibility of such widespread coordination between all those involved in the process. “It may be true and there is an incentive to do that (unfairly bloat the CPI-IW), but one can’t say that without empirical prool “. said Arup Mura, labour and employment professor, IEG.

This needs a nexus, because unless all the officials coordinate it won’t be possible,” added Mitra. The CPI-IW and WPI have shown vastly diverging trends through the years. During 2009, when inflation rate as per the CPI-IW was actually rising above 11%, the WPI inflation rate was falling to negative rates.

Since January 1, 2008 the rate of dearness allowance for central government employees has risen from 12% to 51%, an increase of 39 percentage points. According to a Patnaik, professor, NIPFP, the divergence can be explained by the difference in baskets used for both the indices. She dismissed the collectors’ bias theory, saying, “in a study, we found that the prices for a particular commodity reported under CPI is in line with other sources like the NCDEX, ministry of agriculture data. So evidence doesn’t suggest a bias,” said Patnaik.

CPI—AII India weights -2011 See website: http://mospi.nic.in/Mospi_New/upload/brochure_n_cpi18_feb11.pdf

 

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