August inflation shockingly spurts to 7.55%

14 Sep 2012 Evaluate

Adding to the hardships of policy makers, the wholesale price index (WPI), India's main inflation gauge, shockingly rose at 7.55% for the month of August, as compared to 6.87% (Provisional) for the previous month and 9.78% during the corresponding month of the previous year.

The much awaited figure was worse than the consensus estimates of 7.06%. Meanwhile, build up inflation in the financial year so far was 3.48% compared to a build-up of 3.61% in the corresponding period of the previous year. Moreover, the annual reading for the month of June was revised sharply higher to 7.58% from earlier of 7.25%. The index for Manufactured Products, which carries weight of almost 65% in the index, rose by 0.8% to 146.9 from 145.7 for the previous month. The index for ‘Food Articles’ group rising by 3% to 164.5 from 159.7 in the previous month, continued driving the headline inflation higher.

Meanwhile, the index for primary articles group, which has a weightage of 20.12% in overall WPI and includes food, non-food and minerals groups rose 0.3% to 219.5 from 218.8 for the previous month. The index for ‘Non Food Articles’ group rose by 3.8% to 206.8 from 199.2 in the previous month. Meanwhile, the index for ‘Food Articles’ group eased by 0.4% at 211.4 (Provisional) from 212.2 (Provisional) for the previous month. However, the index for ‘Minerals’ group declined by 1.3% to 331.3 (Provisional) from 335.8 (Provisional) for the previous month.

Moreover, the index for fuel and power group with a weightage of 14.91% in index too spurted by 3.1% to 181.0 from 175.5, due to higher prices of electricity (agricultural) (23%), electricity (industry) (11%), electricity (domestic) (9 %), electricity (railway traction) (8%),  light diesel oil (7%), electricity (commercial) and naphtha (6%each), aviation turbine fuel (5%), furnace oil (4%), kerosene (2%) and petrol (1%).

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 slide in economic growth to a three year low in June quarter.  Further, the worse than expected inflation figures confirms the case of world’s most aggressive central bank’s prolonging anti-inflationary stance during its next mid-quarterly policy review on September 17, 2012, as trend for inflation continues to remain on the upside.

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