Retail Inflation reverses its easing trend; spikes up to 9.84% in September

15 Oct 2013 Evaluate

In yet another trouble for policy makers, Inflation based on the Consumer Price Index (CPI), the retail inflation, reversing its two months easing trend and increasing the odds of another rate hike in quarterly monetary policy review later this month, accelerated to 9.84% in September as against 9.52% in the previous month. The provisional CPI numbers for rural, urban and combined were at 137.8, 134.0 and 136.2 respectively.

The CPI inflation in rural area spiked up to 9.71% in September from 8.93% recorded in the previous month. While, retail inflation for urban areas, eased to 9.93% in the month under review as compared to 10.32% recorded in the previous month.

Among all the constituents that make the CPI, the steepest rise was witnessed in Vegetable prices, which rose by sharp 34.93% as against 26.48% in August. Meanwhile, Cereals and products prices too rose by 12.77% as against 14.09% in August. Group wise, price rise in overall food and beverages rose to 11.44% in September from 11.06% in the previous month, while, inflation in fuel and light slowed down to 7.67% in the month under review from 7.58% in August. The clothing and footwear segment inflation crept higher at 9.28% in September as against 8.99% in the previous month.

These figures add to a string of dismal macroeconomic indicators of the country, as the annual rate of inflation, based on monthly WPI, too crept up at seven month high of 6.46% (provisional) for the month of September, 2013 (over September, 2012) as compared to 6.10% (provisional) for the previous month, while August IIP figures too throwing up ugly surprise, grew by mere 0.6% at to 165.7 as compared to 164.7 in the same month of previous year, much lower than the street expectation of over 2% figure.

Thus, the latest data adds to the odds of Reserve Bank of India, raising repo rates in the upcoming quarterly policy review on October 29, in order to do away with sticky inflation. Reserve Bank of India’s new governor, Raghuram Rajan, keeping inflation fight at the top of agenda had hiked the policy Repo Rate under the Liquidity Adjustment Facility (LAF) by 25 basis points from 7.25% to 7.50% in its mid-quarter monetary policy review on September 19.

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