Centre to source Amazon, Flipkart data for CPI revamp in 2026

The Centre will reportedly source price data from e-commerce giants such as Amazon and Flipkart, as well as ride-hailing platforms, to overhaul the Consumer Price Index (CPI).

According to a Reuters report, the government is planning to revamp the CPI in 2026 to better capture shifting consumption habits and address consumer concerns. With the growing use of online platforms, the Centre has decided to integrate pricing data from e-commerce to make inflation measures more robust.

Currently, countries like the US and South Korea have already incorporated scanner and online prices into their inflation indices.

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Saurabh Garg, Secretary of the Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation, said the Centre has begun scraping prices from e-commerce websites in 12 cities with populations above 2.5 million and is in talks with platforms to access data directly.

The revamped CPI will also include data on airfares and streaming media prices from online sources.

Total of 22 warehouses of Amazon, Flipkart, Zomato-owned Blinkit raided since FY25

Platforms have been asked to share weekly average prices of goods with the government, which will later be cross-verified against a broader dataset. The additional data sources will be included in CPI computation when a new series is rolled out early next year. The exercise will also capture shifts in consumer spending patterns, with recent data showing Indians are allocating a smaller share of their budgets to food.

According to Bain & Company, India had about 270 million online shoppers in 2024, a figure projected to grow at 22% annually.