Resuming its upward swing, the inflation rate touched 6.31 per cent for the week ended May 6. The annual point-to-point rate of inflation went up to a 73-week high after dipping to 5.94 per cent in the previous week.
Higher prices of furnace oil, naphtha, urad and raw rubber, pushed the index up by 0.1 per cent to 151.7. With this, the provisional rate of inflation has gone up by 50 per cent since the new index was introduced in the week ending April 1.
The sharp rise in inflation this fiscal has been due to the hike in prices of administered items, the change in the composition of the index and the low-base effect of last years' inflation levels.
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The inflation rate based on the Wholesale Price Index (WPI) was 3.41 per cent during the corresponding week in the previous year.
The final WPI index for all commodities (Base 1993-94=100) for the week ended March 11 was 149.1 against the provisional figure of 146.9. The final rate of inflation was reported to be 5.30 per cent against 3.74 per cent reported earlier.
A sharp rise of 18 per cent in furnace oil prices, 6 per cent in naphtha prices and 3 per cent in light diesel oil and bitumen prices pushed up the fuel, power, light and lubricants index by 0.7 per cent during the week.
The index for primary articles went up by 0.3 per cent over the week. Within this group, the food articles index rose by 0.2 per cent due to a rise in prices of urad (7 per cent), gram and poultry chicken prices (4 per cent), jowar prices (2 per cent) and bajra, barley, arhar, milk and mutton (1 per cent each). Inland fish prices however fell by 3 per cent, fruit prices fell by 2 per cent and ragi, masur and egg prices fell by 1 per cent each.