The Wholesale Price Index (WPI)-based inflation cooled to 2.60 percent in September after soaring to a four-month high of 3.24 percent in August. Although for common people, the WPI data holds no value, their concern is, will the prices of groceries and vegetables go down?
The inflation data released by the government on Monday showed that inflation in food articles narrowed to 2.04 percent during the month, from 5.75 percent in August.
And inflation in vegetable prices cooled to 15.48 percent in September as against a high of 44.91 percent last month. This gives a hope that prices of vegetables will go down.
However, on a year-on-year basis, the inflation has gone up by 124 basis points from the same month last year. WPI core inflation rate also rose to three percent from 2.5 percent on a month-on-month basis.
Taking a microscopic view on the data, it showed that onion prices continued to rule high, with 79.78 percent increase in September. Inflation in egg, meat and fish segment stood at 5.47 percent for the month of September, while the rate in manufactured products witnessed a slight increase to 2.72 percent, against 2.45 percent in August.
On the flip side, inflation marginally narrowed in the fuel and power segment from 9.99 percent in August to 9.01 in September, the Union Ministry of Commerce and Industry data showed. Similarly, pulses continued to witness deflation, at 24.26 percent. Similarly, potato saw a deflation at 46.52 percent while wheat stood at 1.71 percent.
Earlier this month, the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) had kept benchmark interest rate unchanged on fears of rising inflation. RBI in its bi-monthly policy meeting lowered the growth forecast to 6.7 percent for the current financial year from the previous estimate of 7.3 percent. It also raised its inflation forecast to a range of 4.2 to 4.6 percent during the remainder of current fiscal as against 4 to 4.5 percent previously.
