The consumer price index (CPI)-based inflation for the month of February eased to a four-month low of 5.9 per cent staying within the Reserve Bank of India (RBI)’s tolerance level of 2-6 per cent for six consecutive months.
As per the data released by the government, the rural inflation came at 5.34 per cent in February, which is the same as in January and 5.93 per cent in December.
The urban inflation for February also eased marginally to 4.78 per cent as against January’s 4.92 per cent.
Food and beverage recorded an inflation of 8.66 per cent against 8.3 per cent in January 2024.
CPI inflation for the sixth consecutive time extended its stay inside the RBI’s tolerance range of 2 to 6 per cent and has now spent 53 months in a row above the medium-term target of 4%.
Last month, the RBI MPC had left the policy repo rate unchanged at 6.5 per cent, and forecasted inflation at 5 per cent in the current quarter before easing to 4 per cent in July-September.
However, it is then set to rise to 4.7 per cent in the first quarter of 2025.
On the upside were the prices of cereals at 0.5 per cent, and meat and fish at 2.3 per cent. Meanwhile, spices were down 1.9 per cent, eggs were down 1.2 per cent, and edible oils were down 0.6 per cent.
Vegetable price index was largely steady down with a marginal 0.1 per cent in February compared to January.
Apart from food, only the price index for housing is rising by 0.5 per cent while the other groups of the CPI basket posted MoM increases in the range of 0.1-0.2 per cent.
Index of Industrial Production grows by 3.8 per cent:
According to data released by the Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation, the growth in industrial output decelerated to 3.8% in January.
The manufacturing sector’s growth slowed to 3.2 per cent from 4.5 per cent a month ago, even as the uptick in mining and electricity generation accelerated to 5.9 and 5.6 per cent, respectively.
The data further said the production of consumer durables jumped 10.9 per cent, the highest growth in three months, but gained from base effects as their output had contracted 8.2 per cent in January 2023.
Capital goods production picked up pace to grow 4.1 per cent in January, and intermediate goods also grew faster at 4.8 per cent compared to 3.9 per cent in December 2023. However, the growth rates for primary goods and infrastructure/construction goods eased to 2.9 and 4.6 per cent, respectively in January.
Computers, electronics and optic products saw the steepest fall of 11.9 per cent while the pharmaceuticals’ output remained flat compared to last January, the data said.