Retail inflation surges to seven-month high of 6.01% in January

15 Feb 2022 Evaluate

Breaching the upper tolerance level of the Reserve Bank of India (RBI), retail inflation soared to a seven-month high of 6.01 per cent in January 2022, driven by rising prices certain food items. The Consumer Price Index (CPI) in December 2021 has been revised upwards to 5.66 per cent from 5.59 per cent. In the year-ago month of January 2021, the retail inflation stood at 4.06 per cent. The previous high was 6.26 per cent in June 2021. The RBI, which mainly factors in the CPI-based inflation, has been tasked by the government to keep the inflation at 4 per cent, with margin of 2 per cent on either side.

The National Statistical Office (NSO) under Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation in its data has showed that the Rural CPI (General) in January 2022 stood at 6.12 per cent as against 5.36 per cent in December. The Urban CPI (General) stood at 5.91 per cent in January as against 5.90 per cent in December. The index value for Rural, Urban and Combined CPI (General) stood at 166.4, 165.0 and 165.7 respectively, in January 2022.

As per the data released by the NSO, the inflation in the food basket was 5.43 per cent in January 2022 as against 4.05 per cent in the preceding month. The rate of price rise in ‘cereals and products’ quickened to 3.39 per cent during the month as against 2.62 per cent in December. Likewise, the retail inflation in ‘meat and fish’ category accelerated to 5.47 per cent from 4.58 per cent. In vegetables, the inflation moved up to 5.19 per cent against a deceleration of (-) 2.99 per cent in December. However, price rise of ‘oil and fats’ softened during the month with an inflation print at 18.70 per cent. Fuel and light segment too witnessed a softening of inflation at 9.32 per cent against 10.95 per cent.

The Price data are collected from selected 1114 urban Markets and 1181 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 January 2022, NSO collected prices from 99.7% villages and 98.2% urban Markets while the Market-wise prices reported therein were 89.3% for rural and 93.3% for urban.