India’s wholesale inflation rises further

The rate of inflation based on WPI Food Index increased marginally from 8.71 per cent in March to 8.88 per cent in April….reports Asian Lite News

India’s wholesale inflation gauged by the Wholesale Price Index rose to 15.08 per cent in April from 14.55 per cent in March, official data showed.

The WPI inflation was 10.74 per cent a year ago.

Reportedly, WPI has been in double digits for over a year now.

The rate of inflation based on WPI Food Index increased marginally from 8.71 per cent in March to 8.88 per cent in April.

The high rate of inflation in April was primarily due to rise in prices of mineral oils, basic metals, crude petroleum and natural gas, food articles, non-food articles, food products and chemicals and chemical products in comparison with last year, an official statement said on Tuesday.

Provisional figures of Wholesale Price Index (WPI) are released on 14th of every month (or next working day) with a time lag of two weeks of the reference month and compiled with data received from institutional sources and selected manufacturing units across the country.

Notably, India’s retail inflation accelerated to 7.79 per cent in April, remaining above the tolerance limit of the central bank RBI for a fourth month in a row, data released last week showed.

Meanwhile, the Indian currency rupee touched yet another all-time low against the US dollar earlier this morning.

The rupee fell 14 paise to 77.69 per US dollar.

Money market participants are currently closely watching the domestic share market for clues to fund flows.

An expectation of tightening monetary policy rates in the US also weighed on the rupee as any rate hike in the advanced markets typically follows with fund outflows from the emerging markets in order to accumulate higher returns.

Rupee has been under-pressure after the global central banks started the normalising policy and last week RBI too started raising key interest rates.

Besides, the rupee weakened on account of a surge in the global crude oil prices.

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