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[India Plans Major Overhaul of Industrial Production Index: Adding Rare Earths, Water Supply, and Other Utilities; Adopting a Chain-Linked Approach; New Version to be Released on June 1] ⑴ The Indian government announced on Monday a major revision to its Industrial Production Index to more accurately capture the country's evolving industrial structure. The new series will update the base year from 2011-12 to 2022-23, aligning it with other macroeconomic indicators such as GDP, CPI, and WPI. ⑵ The Technical Advisory Committee proposed expanding the index's scope to include minor minerals, rare earth minerals, gas supply, water supply, wastewater treatment, and waste management activities. This is one of the most extensive revisions to the index in recent years. The revised basket will contain 1,042 products, mapped to 463 project groups, and will adopt the NIC-2025 classification system. ⑶ Key improvements include: introducing a chain-linked industrial production index in addition to the fixed base period index; addressing the "creative destruction" problem of businesses and products during production line changes by replacing and supplementing plants; and recommending the adoption of a producer price index-based deflator instead of a wholesale price index deflator once the producer price index becomes available. (4) From a trading logic perspective, the committee recommends replacing factories that have been permanently closed or have undergone significant changes to their production lines with comparable operating units, and adding newly commissioned large factories throughout the index's lifecycle. The method for connecting the old and new series will be changed from an arithmetic average to a geometric average to provide smoother and more statistically consistent results. The new index will be first released on June 1, 2026, providing data from April 2023 onwards, including preliminary estimates for April 2026.