India's retail inflation in August eases to 6.83 per cent as vegetable prices cooled compared to the previous month, according to the data released by the Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation (MoSPI) on Tuesday. Retail inflation in July jumped to 7.44 per cent from 4.87 per cent in June, mainly due to higher food prices.
This is the second month in a row that CPI inflation has come in higher than the upper bound of the Reserve Bank of India's (RBI) tolerance level of 2-6 per cent. It is also the 47th month in a row that it has stayed above the central bank's medium-term target of 4 per cent. One basis point is one-hundredth of a percentage point.
Food inflation declined to 9.94 per cent in August against 11.51 per cent in July. Rural inflation was on the higher side at 7.02 per cent, compared to urban inflation at 6.59 per cent in August.
The RBI has projected the CPI inflation at 5.4 per cent for 2023-24.
The price data are collected from selected 1,114 urban Markets and 1,181 villages covering all states/UTs through personal visits by field staff of Field Operations Division of NSO, MoSPI on a weekly roster. During the month of August 2023, NSO collected prices from 99.6 per cent villages and 98.3 per cent urban markets while the market-wise prices reported therein were 88.8 per cent for rural and 91.3 per cent for urban.
Meanwhile, in the index of industrial production (IIP) growth for July came at 5.7 per cent against 4.8 per cent in June. For July 2023, the IIP stood at 142.0. For mining, manufacturing and electricity sectors for the month of July, the IIP came at 111.9, 141.2, and 204.0, respectively. Factory output measured in terms of the Index of IIP grew by 2.2 per cent in July 2022. The data released by the NSO showed that the manufacturing sector's output increased by 4.6 per cent in July 2023.
Mining output rose 10.7 per cent during the month under review. Power output grew eight per cent in July 2023. The IIP grew by 4.8 per cent in April-July 2023 compared to 10 per cent in the same period of 2022.