New Delhi: India’s retail inflation jumped six-month high of 5.59 per cent in December, primarily because of an uptick in food prices, according to the data released by the government on Monday.
The Consumer Price Index (CPI)-based retail inflation was 4.91 per cent in November 2021 and 4.59 per cent in December 2020.
According to the data released by the National Statistical Office (NSO), food inflation rose to 4.05 per cent in December this fiscal year compared to 1.87 per cent in the preceding month.
The Reserve Bank of India (RBI), which mainly factors in the retail inflation while arriving at its bi-monthly monetary policy, expects the inflation print to be somewhat higher over the rest of the year as base effects turn adverse.
According to the RBI, it is expected that headline inflation will peak in the fourth quarter of the current fiscal and soften thereafter.
On the other hand, the country’s industrial production rose 1.4 per cent in November 2021, according to official data released on Wednesday.
According to the Index of Industrial Production (IIP) data by the NSO, the manufacturing sector’s output grew 0.9 per cent in November last year.
In November 2021, the mining output climbed 5 per cent, and power generation increased 2.1 per cent. The IIP had contracted by 1.6 per cent in November 2020.
During April-November this fiscal, the IIP grew 17.4 per cent against a 15.3 per cent contraction in the same period last year.
Industrial production has been hit due to the coronavirus pandemic since March 2020, when it had contracted 18.7 per cent.
It shrank 57.3 per cent in April 2020 due to a decline in economic activities in the wake of the lockdown imposed to curb the spread of coronavirus infections.
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