The steep hike in petrol, diesel and LPG prices, which was announced by the government in the first week of November, pushed up inflation to 7.76 per cent during the week ended November 6. It is expected that inflation might go up further in the coming days after the full effect of the fuel price hike, especially that of diesel, is felt through a price hike of other products.The wholesale price index (WPI) inflation surged by 0.70 per cent from the previous week’s level of 7.06 per cent even as there was decline in the prices of primary and manufactured products. The general price level stood at 5.18 per cent in the year-ago period.As per the wholesale price index data, there was 9 per cent increase in the price of diesel, 8 per cent for LPG and 6 per cent in petrol during the latest reported week. Government revised the point-to-point inflation to 8.15 per cent for the week ended September 11 as against the provisional 7.87 per cent. The wholesale price index stood corrected at 189.7 points during the second week of September as compared to provisional figure of 189.2 points.With inflation hovering over 7 per cent since July, mainly due to high global oil prices, Finance Minister P. Chidambaram recently put the onus on states to cut sales tax on petroleum products to moderate inflation.During the latest reported week, the wholesale price index was up by 0.4 per cent to 190.3 points despite cheaper non-food articles and some of the manufactured products, and the index was 176.6 points in the year-ago period. The index of mass consumption primary articles’ group fell by 0.3 per cent to 192.4 points. Food articles’ group index rose by 0.2 per cent to 192.3. The index for non-food articles’ plummetted by 1.4 per cent to 184.4 points. Power, lights and lubricants’ group index rose by over 3 per cent to 291.3 points.
