Prof Prem Kumar Dhumal, Chief Minister of Himachal Pradesh, launched the website of the Department of Economics and Statistics. Addressing the media persons on the occasion, the Chief Minister informed that the website has weekly market rates available for all the Districts of Himachal Pradesh and that these rates are kind of indicative check on the prices being charged by the retailers for essential items. As these rates are collected by departmental officials on routine basis as common citizens, these rates reflect correct picture and are useful for other monitoring departments.

Sh. Pradesh Chauhan, Economic Advisor Himachal Pradesh and Sh. Rajesh Bahadur, SIO NIC HP were present on the occasion. The Economic Adviser gave a detailed presentation of the website contents. An important section of the website is the query based village wise information interface related to infrastructure, education, health, public distribution system etc. The data is available upto December 2008 and is in the process of correction. Once the entire data for the State is available, it will be very useful for planning purposes to other Departments and Panchayati Raj Institutions.

The website has been designed and developed by NIC Himachal Pradesh and is hosted at http://himachal.nic.in/economics