May retail inflation rises to 3.05%, industrial production gains in April

Industrial production stood at 3.4 per cent compared to -0.1% in March.

Retail inflation spiked to a seven-month high of 3.05 per cent in May mainly due to costlier food items, government data showed Wednesday.

The consumer price index (CPI) based retail inflation for April was revised marginally upwards to 2.99 per cent from the earlier estimate of 2.92 per cent, data released by the Central Statistics Office (CSO) showed. Retail inflation stood at 4.87 per cent in May 2018.

The previous high was in October 2018, when the retail inflation print came in at 3.38 per cent. As per the data, inflation in the food basket rose to 1.83 per cent in May, higher than 1.1 per cent in April.

Industrial production grew at a six-month high of 3.4 per cent in April mainly on account of improvement in mining and power generation.

The Index of Industrial Production (IIP) had expanded by 4.5 per cent in April 2018. The expansion in the mining sector was 5.1 per cent compared to 3.8 per cent in the year-ago month.

Similarly, the growth in the power sector was 6 per cent in April as against 2.1 per cent in the corresponding month of the last fiscal. However, there was a slowdown in the manufacturing sector.

The previous high in industrial growth was recorded at 8.4 per cent in October 2018.