Inflation rate falls further to 5.56 pc

OCT 1: The annual inflation rate further declined by 0.16 percentage point to 5.56 per cent in the week ended September 16, despite rise i...

OCT 1: The annual inflation rate further declined by 0.16 percentage point to 5.56 per cent in the week ended September 16, despite rise in prices of primary articles and manufactured products.

The point-to-point inflation rate based on the wholesale price index (WPI) for all commodities (Base: 1993-94100) was 5.72 per cent in the previous week and 3.48 per cent a year ago.

The WPI was, however, up marginally by 0.1 per cent to 153.7 (provisional) as against 153.5 in the previous week. The final WPI for the week ended July 22 stood at 153.2 as compared to provisional figure of 152.7.

The inflation rate based on the final index was 6.61 as against the provisional rate of 6.26 per cent during July 22. The point-to-point inflation rate based on consumer price index for Industrial Workers (Base: 1982100) fell sharply by almost one per cent to 3.99 per cent in the month of August as against 4.95 per cent in July 2000.

The WPI inched up due to a 0.1 per cent rise in indices of both primary articles and manufactured products.

The price index of fuel, power, light and lubricants remained unchanged for the third consecutive week.

Primary Articles group index rose to 162.4 during theek from 162.3 in the previous week and 161.7 a year ago, on account of 0.4 per cent rise in food articles and 0.1 per cent increase in mineral prices.

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The Food Articles index stood at 170.4 as compared to169.8 in the previous week due to higher prices of barley (four per cent), fruits and vegetables, eggs, poultry chicken (three per cent each), jowar and ragi (two per cent each), gram, masur and mutton (one per cent each).

However, prices declined for bajra (seven per cent),moong (three per cent), fish-marine (two per cent) wheat, maize, arhar, urad and fish-inland (one per cent each).

The index for Minerals group went up to 115.9 as against115.8 in the previous week, due to a sharp 14 per cent rise in the price in gypsum.

The Non-food Articles index delined by 0.7 per cent to145.9 from the previous week’s figure of 147.

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The decline in non-food articles was on account ofcheaper sunflower, rape and mustard seeds (six per cent each), raw silk and linseed (four per cent each), castor seed and fodder three per cent each), groundnut seed, cotton seed, gingelly seed and raw tobacco (one per cent each).

Price of kardi seed, however, went up by one per cent.

Fuel, Power, Light and Lubricants group index remainedunchanged at 198.3 as in the previous week but was higher than the last year’s level of 157.5.