July’s inflation cools down significantly to 6.87%

14 Aug 2012 Evaluate

Offering a little relief to the Reserve Bank of India (RBI), the wholesale price index (WPI), India's main inflation gauge, unexpectedly slipped at 6.87% for the month of July, its lowest since January 2010, as compared to 7.25% (Provisional) for the previous month and 9.36% during the corresponding month of the previous year.

The much awaited figure, was also way below than the consensus estimates of 7.40%. Meanwhile, build up inflation in the financial year so far was reported at 2.36% as compared to a build-up of 3.14% in the corresponding period of the previous year. Meanwhile, the annual reading for May remained unchanged at 7.55%.

The index for primary articles group, which has a weightage of 20.12 percent in overall WPI and includes food, non-food and minerals groups rose 1.1% to 218.8 from 216.4 for the previous month. The index for ‘Food Articles’ group rising by 1.4% to 212.2 from 209.2 for the previous month continued to drive the headline numbers.  Meanwhile, the index for ‘Non-Food Articles’ group rose by 2.9% at 199.2 (Provisional) from 193.5 (Provisional) for the previous month. However, the index for ‘Minerals’ group declined by 3.4% to 335.8 (Provisional) from 347.6 (Provisional) for the previous month.

The index for fuel and power group with a weightage of 14.91percent in index too declined by 1.5% to 175.5 from 178, due to lower prices of light diesel oil (10%), furance oil (8%), naphtha (7%), aviation turbine fuel (ATF) and petrol (4% each). Meanwhile, the index for Manufactured Products, which carries weight of almost 65% in the index, rose by 0.6% to 145.7 from 144.8 for the previous month.

Although the numbers have come lower than expectation, but still fail to emerge as game changing number. Inflation staying above 7% mark for almost two-and-half-years by now, has limited RBI’s abilities of easing monetary policy too aggressively despite the steepest slide in economic growth in almost a decade in the January-March quarter.

The connoisseur are of the beliefs that lower than expected numbers would cast no impact on world’s most aggressive central bank’s anti-inflationary stance during its next mid-quarterly policy review on September 17, 2012, as risk for inflation continues to remain on the upside . The RBI, like previous mid-quarterly policy review, this time around also is expected to maintain its status quo stance on key policy rates.

© 2025 The Alchemists Ark Pvt. Ltd. All rights reserved. MoneyWorks4Me ® is a registered trademark of The Alchemists Ark Pvt. Ltd.

×