New Delhi, April 30: The government will come out with a new inflation index by the end of this year.

The new wholesale price index will have 980 items, more than double the current number, to reflect the price movement more realistically.

In recent times, the existing index has come in for criticism for failing to capture the total price picture.

The new index, with 2004-05 as a base, will give the inflation figure on a monthly basis. However, price movements of essential commodities such as agricultural products will be released weekly as is done now.

The number of items which will be part of the index will be doubled to about 980 from 435 at present, a senior government official said.

The additional items will mostly be from manufacturing. In the existing scheme of things, the sector has a weight of over 63 per cent in the index.

The revised series will have a substantially updated and representative basket of commodities as well as their varieties/grades and markets, the official said.

More steps

A day after announcing a slew of measures to control inflation, finance minister P. Chidambaram today said the government would take more steps to rein in prices.

“The government has taken pre-emptive action against rising prices and will take further fiscal, monetary, and supply side measures to check inflation,” he told the Rajya Sabha while replying to the debate on the Finance Bill, which was later passed.