Inflation dips to 5.78%

The inflation fell below the 6% mark, after almost seven months, to 5.78% during the week ended January 1, mainly due to a fall in prices of fuels, vegetables and fruits, edible oils and other food items.

The wholesale price index (WPI) based inflation fell by 0.61% during the review week from 6.39% in the previous week despite a rise in manufactured products prices.

A series of measures by the finance ministry and the reserve bank helped bring down the inflation to 5.78%, lower than 6.45% a year ago.

Although point-to-point inflation fell, the broad-based WPI rose by 0.2% to 188.6 points due to costly manufactured products and furnace oil. The index was 178.3 points a year ago.

Government revised upward its inflation figure to 7.93% for week ended November 6, as against the provisional figure of 7.76%.

The final WPI stood corrected at 190.6 against the provisional 190.3 during November first week.

Fall in inflation could be attributed to dip in fuel prices by 0.2%, while primary articles prices were unchanged.

Primary articles group index was static at 186.1 although prices of food articles dipped by 0.1% while that of non-food articles rose by 0.3%. The group index was 181.7 a year ago.

Food articles group index declined to 184.8 due to lower prices of tea (4%), vegetables (3%), rice, arhar (1% each).

However, prices rose for fish marine (3%), bajra and maize (2% each), eggs, jowar and fruits (1% each).

Non-food articles group index rose to 181.7 points as prices went up for logs and timber (11%), foddar and raw tobacco (1% each).

However, prices fell for niger seed (6%), raw silk and gingelly seed (2% each), mesta, groundnut seed and copra (1% each).