The Hindu Business Line : Manufactured products prices push inflation rate to 3.42%

Situation
Present inflation higher than previous week’s annual rise of 3.23%
Spurt in year-on-year rate mainly due to rise in manufactured product prices.
This is the sixth straight week inflation has been below 4% mark.

Our Bureau

New Delhi, Oct. 5 The annual Wholesale Price Index-based inflation rose to 3.42 per cent during the week ended September 22, higher than previous week’s annual rise of 3.23 per cent. The spurt in the year-on-year inflation rate was mainly due to a rise in manufactured product prices, Government data showed on Friday.

This is the sixth straight week that inflation has been below 4 per cent mark and the sixteenth week it has been under 5 per cent, the RBI’s target for the current fiscal.

During the latest reported week, the WPI for ‘all commodities’ rose to 215 points, from 214.4 points for the previous week. The annual rate of inflation stood at 5.43 per cent during the corresponding week a year ago.

Group index

The primary articles group index declined by 0.1 per cent to 226.2 points, with the food articles group down 0.1 per cent to 225.4 points due to lower prices of urad, gram, condiments and spices (1 per cent each). However, the prices of barley (2 per cent) moved up.

The fuel, power, light and lubricants group index remained unchanged at its previous week’s level of 322 points. The heavyweight manufactured products group index rose 0.5 per cent to 187.2 points, with the index for the food products group rising 1 per cent to 189.2 points due to higher prices of oil cakes (6 per cent) and salt, gingelly oil, rice bran oil and imported edible oil (1 per cent each).

However, the prices of skimmed milk powder (2 per cent) and gur (1 per cent) fell.

The index for the Textiles group declined by 0.2 per cent to 132.9 points due to lower prices of hessian and sacking bags (3 per cent) and hessian cloth (one per cent). The index for Chemicals and Chemical Products group rose 0.3 per cent to 203.4 points due to higher prices of acids (12 per cent) and phenol (1 per cent).

For metals, non-metals

The index for the non-metallic mineral products group rose by 0.1 per cent to 207 points due to marginal rise in the prices of cement.

The index for basic metals, alloys and metal products group rose by 1.6 per cent to 247 points due to higher prices of blooms and billets and slabs (10 per cent each), tensile plates, wire (all kinds) and lead ingots (5 per cent each), angles, channels and sections (4 per cent), ferro silicon (3 per cent) and zinc ingots (2 per cent). However, the prices of aluminium ingots (3 per cent) declined.

For the week ended July 28, the final WPI stood revised at 213.9 points, compared to the provisional estimate of 213.4 points, while the annual rate of inflation based on final index stood revised to 4.70 per cent, compared to 4.45 per cent points estimated using the provisional figures.

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