New Delhi: The country’s annual consumer price inflation further eased to 1.54 per cent in June, helped by a fall in food prices, government data showed Wednesday.
The rise was slower than 1.70 per cent forecast by economists in a recently-held media poll, and was the lowest since India started releasing retail inflation data in January 2012 based on a combined CPI index for rural and urban consumers.
Inflation in the previous month – May this year – was 2.18 per cent.
On the other hand, in June last year, it was 5.77 per cent.
As per the data released by Central Statistics Office, inflation in the food basket as a whole contracted further to 2.12 per cent last month as compared to (-)1.05 per cent in May.
The latest series of Consumer Price Index (CPI) was introduced in January 2012.
Vegetables inflation declined to 16.53 and that of pulses and products to 21.92 per cent.
There was decline in rate of price in eggs (-0.08 per cent). On the other hand, the protein rich meat and fish turned costlier as the inflation spiked to 3.49 per cent in June from 1.87 per cent in May. Fruits too were dearer on monthly basis.
The retail inflation in the fuel and light segment slowed to 4.54 per cent as compared to 5.46 in May.
The Reserve Bank, which mainly factors in retail inflation to arrive at its monetary policy, is slated to meet in early August to announce the next bi-monthly policy rate.
IIP at 1.7% from 8% a year ago
Industrial output growth slumped to 1.7 per cent in May from 8 per cent a year-ago due to poor performance of mining and manufacturing, and may put pressure on the RBI to cut interest rate in its policy next month.
The factory output growth, measured on the Index of Industrial Production (IIP), for April-May period decelerated to 2.3 per cent from 7.3 per cent in the same period last fiscal, as per the data released by the Central Statistics Office.
The data further revealed that output of the capital goods segment, considered as key indicator of investment, shrunk by 3.9 per cent compared to a high growth of 13.9 per cent recorded in May 2016.
The consumer durables segment too witnessed a decline.
While mining sector output declined by 0.9 per cent in May against 5.7 per cent growth in the year-ago month, the growth of manufacturing sector slowed to 1.2 per cent from 8.6 per cent in the same month last year.
However, electricity generation expanded by 8.7 per cent in May as against 6.1 per cent growth in the corresponding period last year. PTI