Key Points
As more and more Indians take to ecommerce for their daily groceries, India's statistics ministry is looking to tap price data from online retailers...
The Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation (MoSPI) has approached online grocery shopping platforms BigBasket and Reliance JioMart, to source data on product prices, people familiar with the development told ET...
"Online prices need to be captured...We have asked Big Basket and Reliance JioMart to share data on prices on platforms," said one official...
The ongoing Household Consumer Expenditure Survey (HCES) includes questions on online purchases of products, but it does not seek details about the proportion of products purchased online and offline or other granular data...
Sabnavis suggested that the ministry could later use the data to construct an online price index.. "It would be good to know what proportion of people were using online services and whether inflation for online users was lower or higher than others, like is done for rural and urban categories," Sabnavis added...
