A two-day Review meeting on ‘Support for Statistical Strengthening’ (SSS) Scheme and national workshop on ‘Compilation of sub-State level Consumer Price Indices’ (CPIs) was conducted by the Central Statistics Office (CSO), Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation, on 6th & 7th March, 2017 at Vigyan Bhawan, New Delhi under the Chairmanship of Director General CSO, Shri G. C. Manna.

In the inaugural session, with regard to the Scheme of ‘Support for Statistical Strengthening’ (SSS), which aims at strengthening the State Statistical Systems, the Director General, CSO urged the 14 currently implementing States to expedite the completion of their pending activities and utilize the unspent funds in their respective States by March, 2017. He also emphasized the requirement of compilation of State Level and sub-State level Consumer Price Indices (CPIs), the modalities for which were discussed in the workshop on 7th March, 2017.

The 19 new States were advised to revise their State Programmes as per the new guidelines. It was suggested that the new States’ Directorate of Economics & Statistics (DESs) re-assessed their requirements, together with line departments and include activities like local level database, integrated State level database, generation of core indicators, surveys/studies for new emergent sector such as environment, energy, transport, etc. The modalities of preparation of State Programmes and various suggestions from the States were discussed.

The new States and some of the older States were also advised to constitute the State Implementation Committees for the Scheme under the Principal Secretary [Planning/Statistics] of their respective States and to open dedicated bank accounts under PFMS. The PFMS unit, D/o Expenditure and the Controller of Accounts of the Ministry made presentations, in order to facilitate the operationalization of the PFMS system.

During the National Workshop on Compilation of Sub-State CPI, CSO urged all States/UTs to compile sub-State or district level CPIs and aggregate these to arrive at State/UTs CPIs following the bottom-up approach. In the workshop, officers of the State Governments were sensitized over the importance of district level or sub-State level CPI and were imparted basic training for preparation of item basket, market survey, shop selection, fixing of item specification and price collection etc. for compilation of the index.
 

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