The Office of the Economic Adviser (OEA) is an institutional body, specifically an attached office of the Department for Promotion of Industry and Internal Trade (DPIIT) under the Ministry of Commerce & Industry. Its origin dates back to the pre-Independence era, as the first Economic Adviser to the Government of India, Sir Theodore E.G. Gregory (period 1937-1946), began the 'quick' series of the Wholesale Price Index (WPI). This was created to solve the problem of monitoring price movements at the wholesale level, with the 'quick' series computed from January 10, 1942.
The OEA's core mechanism is its statistical function, which involves compiling and releasing the monthly Wholesale Price Index (WPI) and the monthly Index of Core Industries Production. The WPI is calculated using the Laspeyres formula and currently uses 2011-12 as the base year, tracking 697 commodities. The OEA also provides economic policy inputs on industrial development and advises on the formulation of Industrial Policy and Foreign Trade Policy.
The OEA connects to the broader economic policy framework by supervising the compilation of production statistics for the Index of Industrial Production (IIP), which is computed by the Central Statistics Office. It is important to distinguish the OEA from the Chief Economic Adviser (CEA), who is a separate post in the Ministry of Finance responsible for preparing the annual Economic Survey. The OEA has changed recently, with the new WPI series using the 2011-12 base year becoming effective from April 2017. Furthermore, the OEA is currently involved in constituting a Working Group for the revision of this 2011-12 WPI series.