The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) on Wednesday announced the launch of the latest round of households’ surveys to capture inflation expectations and consumer confidence, which provides useful inputs for its monetary policy. The central bank has been regularly conducting these surveys. Announcing the launch of the May 2021 round of Inflation Expectations Survey of Households (IESH), the RBI said it aims at capturing subjective assessments on price movements and inflation of approximately 6,000 households, based on their individual consumption baskets, across 18 cities.

“The survey seeks qualitative responses from households on price changes (general prices as well as prices of specific product groups) in the three months ahead as well as in the one year ahead period and quantitative responses on current, three months ahead, and one year ahead inflation rates,” it said. The cities include Ahmedabad, Bengaluru, Bhopal, Bhubaneswar, Chandigarh, Delhi, and Guwahati.

The May 2021 round of Consumer Confidence Survey (CCS) will cover approximately 5,400 respondents across 13 cities, including Ahmedabad, Bengaluru, Bhopal, Chennai, Kolkata, Lucknow, Mumbai, and Thiruvananthapuram. The CCS seeks qualitative responses from households, regarding their sentiments on the general economic situation, employment scenario, price level, household income, and spending. The agency engaged by the RBI will conduct the surveys over the telephone (instead of regular personal interview mode) in view of the COVID-19 pandemic. The next meeting of the rate-setting Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) is scheduled during June 2 to 4, 2021.