4-Oct-2022: Department of Consumer Affairs, Government of India amended the Legal Metrology (General) Rules, 2011 for ease of doing business and reducing the compliance burden for the industries
Section 49 of the Legal Metrology Act, 2009 allows the companies to nominate any of its Directors as a person responsible for the business of the Company.
Earlier in case of violations under the Legal Metrology Act the prosecutions were initiated against the Directors of the companies even for the violation done by any establishment or branch or unit in any establishment or branch of the company.
There was request from various industries to allow nominating the person who is actually having the authority and responsibility of the establishment or branch or unit in any establishment or branch and not the Director, so that the notices for the violation done by the establishments or branches or units should not be issued to the Directors who are not responsible for the violation of establishment or branch or unit in any establishment or branch.
The Department for the enhancement of the Ease of Doing Business and for reducing the compliance burden amended the Legal Metrology (General) Rules, 2011 to provide for the companies to nominate an officer of the establishment or branch or unit in any establishment or branch who has the authority and responsibility for planning, directing and controlling the activities of the respective establishment or branch or unit in any establishment or branch.
With this amendment companies having different establishments or branches or different units in any establishment or branch can now nominate an officer who has the authority and responsibility for the operations and activities of the establishments or branches or different units.
This will facilitate the companies to nominate a person who is actually responsible for the activities of an establishment or branch of the company in place of Director of the Company, who is not directly involved in day to day activity of that establishment or branch thereof.
1-Oct-2022: Department of Consumer Affairs organises National Level Capacity Building Workshop on Price Monitoring of Essential Commodities
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.
28-Feb-2021: Monitoring and predictive analysis of prices of essential commodities take a giant step forward in India
Monitoring and predictive analysis of prices of essential commodities has taken a giant step forward in India Mobile App for price monitoring for 22 essential commodities launched by Department of Consumer Affairs starts providing effective real time information about retail and whole sale prices from 127 locations across the country.
To improve the quality of prices data for reporting daily prices by the price reporting centres, the Department of Consumer Affairs launched a Mobile App on 1st January, 2021.
The Department has also proposed to DEA for Technical Assistance Fund under CARES Programme of Asian Development Bank (ADB) for improving price monitoring and analysis. The activity components under the technical assistance are upgradation of price monitoring portal, capacity building for price reporting centres and price monitoring cell, identification of long-term improvements for food commodity supply chain & market efficiency. DEA has approved the proposal.
The Department of Consumer Affairs monitors the price of 22 essential commodities viz., rice, wheat, Atta (wheat), Gram Dal, Tur/Arhar Dal, Urad Dal, Moong Dal, Masoor Dal, Sugar, Milk, Groundnut oil, Mustard oil, Vanaspati, Soya oil, Sunflower oil, Palm oil, Gur, Tea, Salt, Potato, Onion and Tomato.
Daily report of retail and wholesale prices are obtained from 127 price reporting centres located in State Food & Civil Supplies Departments across the country. The daily report of prices and indicative price trends are analysed for taking appropriate decisions such as release of stocks from the buffer, export-import policy etc.
Price reporting through Mobile App ensures reporting from the market location as data are geo-tagged thereby displaying the location from where price data are reported.
Reporting of static data from office desktop is ruled out through the application of Mobile App. Therefore, the condition to operationalise Mobile App is that each Price Reporting Centre has to furnish market details such as names and addresses of the shops and markets from where prices are being collected daily.
As per the guidelines for retail price reporting, prices of the same variety of a commodity are to be collected from three markets, viz., High Income Market, Middle Income Market and Low Income Market, and the average of the three prices is to be reported. The Mobile App has inbuilt feature to calculate and report the average price. This helps in avoiding human errors in calculation.
Market information from Agmarknet, Agriwatch, NAFED and trade associations also constitute inputs for price analyses. The department is utilising the services of Agriwatch for providing market intelligence, predictive analysis of prices and to develop price forecasting model.