Retail inflation soars to 17-month high of 6.95% in March

13 Apr 2022 Evaluate

Continuing its trend to remain above the Reserve Bank of India’s upper tolerance level, retail inflation soared to a 17-month high of 6.95 per cent in March 2022 against 6.07 per cent in February 2022 and 5.52 per cent in March 2021. The Consumer Price Index (CPI) based inflation rose mainly on account of rising prices of essential food items like ‘oils and fats’, vegetables and protein rich items such as ‘meat and fish’. This is the third consecutive month that the inflation remained above the 6 per cent mark. The previous high at 7.61 per cent was recorded in October 2020. RBI’s tolerance limit of retail inflation is 4 per cent with a 2 per cent margin 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 March 2022 stood at 7.66 per cent as against 6.38 per cent in February. The Urban CPI (General) stood at 6.12 per cent in March as against 5.75 per cent in February. The index value for Rural, Urban and Combined CPI (General) stood at 168.7, 166.5 and 167.7 respectively, in March 2022.

As per the data, the inflation in the food basket shot up to 7.68 per cent in March 2022 from 5.85 per cent in the preceding month. In vegetables, inflation quickened to 11.64 per cent in March while in ‘meat and fish’ the rate of price rise stood at 9.63 compared to February 2022. Inflation in ‘oils and fats’ in March soared to 18.79 per cent as the geopolitical crisis due to the Russia-Ukraine war pushed edible oil prices higher. Ukraine is a major exporter of sunflower oil. However, inflation in the ‘fuel and light’ category was lower at 7.52 per cent in March from 8.73 per cent in the preceding month.

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 March 2022, NSO collected prices from 99.9 % villages and 98.3% urban Markets while the Market-wise prices reported therein were 90.2% for rural and 93.2% for urban.

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