The Inflation rate continued to spiral upwards to touch a 70 week high of 6.1 per cent for the week ending April 22. The annual point-to-point rate of inflation based on the wholesale price index (WPI) rose by 0.55 percentage points during the week mainly on account of a sharp hike in electricity tariffs.
The WPI-based inflation rate has shot up by 44.5 per cent from 4.22 per cent to 6.1 per cent since the new index was introduced on April 01 this year. This has been the highest inflation rate following 6.13 per cent in December 19, 1998.
The inflation level in the corresponding week last year was 3.86 per cent. The final WPI based inflation level for the week ending February 26 was 4.39 per cent as against 3.33 per cent reported on the basis of the provisional index.
At a disaggregated level, the index for fuel, power, light and lubricants rose by 5.3 per cent due to a 15 per cent hike in electricity tariffs. The index for primary articles however fell by 0.4 per cent while the index for manufactured products fell by 0.1 per cent during the week.
Within the major group of primary articles, the index for food articles declined by 0.5 per cent mainly due to a 4 per cent fall in wheat and poultry chicken prices. In the same sub-group, however, prices of bajra fell by 4 per cent while prices of barley and ragi fell by 2 per cent each. The index for non-food articles declined by 0.1 per cent due to a 5 per cent fall in fodder prices.
The manufactured products index fell by 0.1 per cent. Within this major group, the index for food products declined by 0.1 per cent due to a 13 per cent fall in prices of salt, 3 per cent fall in bran prices and 2 per cent fall in prices of skimmed milk powder, maida, sooji and gingelly oil. Hydrogenated vanaspati prices however went up by 2 per cent.
The index for textiles fell by 0.9 per cent due to a 3 per cent fall in prices of synthetic yarn and polyster yarn. The index for non-metallic products declined by 0.3 per cent.
