The Department of Consumer Affairs organized a one-day Capacity Building Workshop on Price Monitoring on 30th September, 2022 in New Delhi. The workshop was a part of the initiative to increase the geographical coverage of price collection, improve the quality of price data and analytical output thereof. The main objective of the Workshop was sensitize the State nodal officers of the importance of price data, to familiarize them with the methodology for price collection and to work out the plan for the ensuing capacity building workshops at the zonal/State level for price reporting centres.

In the inaugural address of the Secretary, Department of Consumer Affairs, Shri Rohit Kumar Singh appreciated all state representatives for the commendable job of collecting and reporting price data. He emphasized the importance of the price monitoring, quality of price data being reported and the way the data being used in various policy decisions. He informed the state nodal officers to focus on quality and regularity of the price data. It was also mentioned that having price data collection centers across all the districts in country would result in better representation of information.

The technical support for the upgradation of the PMD is being provided by Asian Development Bank. In the address by Shri Krishan Singh Rautela details of the support provided by ADB and importance of price monitoring for social protection was put in picture.

During the technical sessions, detailed discussions were conducted on price collection app, challenges in the collection process, tech enabled data visualization dashboards and detailed explanation about the policies were discussed with the state nodal officers.

The event concluded with interactions with state nodal officers by addressing their queries about the developments in the department, guidelines of price collection mechanism and developing a roadmap for conducting capacity building workshops in the states to build robust price collection mechanism. In concluding remarks, the economic advisor, Department of Consumer Affairs, Shri K Guite thanked the participants for their immense support and contribution in collection of prices from the collection centre highlighting the importance of the quality of data being reported.

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AD/NS