Inflation will stay in double digits till January, before cooling off, Chief Statistician Pronab Sen said today.
He attributed his projections to base effect, which is the impact of inflation in a year-ago period and second round effect of commodity prices like those of oil and steel.
"The headline inflation will stay in double digits due to base effect till January before easing off. The inflation we are seeing today is the second round effect of oil, steel (prices)," Sen, who is Secretary in the Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation, said.
Sen said the month-on-month inflation has already stabilised.
The commodity prices had also stabilised in May, he said, adding that manufacturing inflation has, however, gone up.
Inflation rose to 12.14 per cent for the first week of September due to higher prices of food items, ditching three consecutive weeks' fall in the rate of price rise.
Planning Commission Deputy Chairman Montek Singh Ahluwalia had yesterday said inflation will return to single digits by the end of the current fiscal.
Talking to reporters accompanying Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on his US visit, he had said the trend of constant rising inflation in India was disappearing.
Sen also said that he supported a proposal to release inflation figures on a monthly basis.
"I support the proposal because the inflation figures coming weekly does not make any sense. Almost every data comes a month. Instruments that we have pertain to macro economic view. We don't have instruments to measure prices on weekly basis. So accuracy is not maintained," he said.
There are also other departments doing a parallel job like consumer affairs ministry collecting data on prices, Sen said.
