The wholesale price index continued to rise in the month of September. Data released by the Commerce Ministry on Wednesday showed that the WPI inflation in 1.32 per cent, compared with 0.16 per cent in August.
“The annual rate of inflation, based on monthly WPI, stood at 1.32 per cent (provisional) for the month of September, 2020 (over September, 2019) as compared to 0.33 per cent during the corresponding month of the previous year,” the Ministry said in its review of ‘Index Numbers of Wholesale Price in India’ for September.
On a year-on-year (YoY) basis, the Wholesale Price Index (WPI) data furnished by the government has risen by only 0.33 per cent during the corresponding period of the previous year.
The wholesale price index based (WPI) inflation was in the negative territory for four straight months – April (-) 1.57 per cent, May (-) 3.37 per cent, June (-) 1.81 per cent and July (-) 0.58 per cent.
The expenses on primary articles, which constitute 22.62 per cent of the WPI’s total weightage, increased 5.10 per cent from 1.60 per cent in August 2020. Furthermore, the prices of food items remained at elevated levels with a rise of 6.92 per cent from 4.07 per cent reported for August.
On Monday, another set of data showed that India’s sequential retail price inflation spiked in September to 7.34 per cent from 6.69 per cent in August.
Though non-comparable, India had recorded retail price inflation of over three per cent in the corresponding period of previous year.