The annual point-to-point inflation rate fell to 4.96 per cent for the week ending 21 July. The wholesale price index (WPI) based inflation rate fell below the five per cent mark for the first time in 14 weeks.
The inflation rate fell by 0.14 percentage points from 5.10 per cent in the previous week despite a rise in prices of primary and manufactured products. Inflation was 6.61 per cent in the corresponding week last year.
The inflation rate based on the final WPI for the week ending 26 May was 5.59 per cent as against 5.52 per cent reported on the basis of the provisional index.
At a disaggregated level, the indices for the major groups of primary articles and for manufactured products rose by 0.1 per cent each.
The index for the fuel, power, lights and lubricants group, which had remained constant for the last 17 weeks, fell by 0.2 per cent during the week on account of a sharp 26 per cent fall in lignite prices.
Within the primary article group, the index for the sub groups of food articles and non-food articles rose by 0.1 per cent each. Items whose prices moved sharply include marine fish (up four per cent) and fodder (up eight per cent).
Within the manufactured products group, the index for
