Retail inflation climbs to 5.52% in March, Industrial production contracts 3.6% in February

The rate of price rise in the food basket accelerated to 4.94% in March. Meanwhile, manufacturing sector output declined by 3.7% and mining output slipped 5.5% in February.

Representative image of a local grocery story in Delhi | Photo: Manisha Mondal | ThePrint File photo

New Delhi: Retail inflation rose to 5.52 per cent in March, mainly on account of higher food prices, government data showed on Monday.

The consumer price index (CPI) based retail inflation stood at 5.03 per cent in February.

The rate of price rise in the food basket accelerated to 4.94 per cent in March, as against 3.87 per cent in the preceding month, as per data released by the National Statistical Office (NSO).

Inflation in ‘fuel and light’ category was 4.50 per cent during the month vis-a-vis 3.53 per cent in February.

Earlier this month, the Reserve Bank of India had projected the retail inflation at 5 per cent in the January-March quarter of 2020-21 and 5.2 per cent in the first two quarters of the current fiscal.

After breaching the upper tolerance threshold of 6 per cent for six consecutive months (June-November 2020), CPI inflation fell in December 2020 and eased further in January 2021 to 4.1 per cent on the back of a sharp correction in vegetable prices and softening of cereal prices.

However, it rebounded to 5 per cent in February, driven primarily by base effects.

The Reserve Bank, which mainly factors in the retail inflation while arriving at its monetary policy, has been asked to keep CPI inflation at 4 per cent with a margin of 2 per cent on either side.

The central bank retained the key lending rate (repo) in its last monetary policy citing inflationary concerns.

IIP contracts by 3.6% in February

India’s industrial production contracted by 3.6 per cent in February, official data showed on Monday.

According to the Index of Industrial Production (IIP) data released by the National Statistical Office (NSO), manufacturing sector output declined by 3.7 per cent in February 2021.

Mining output slipped 5.5 per cent, while power generation grew by 0.1 per cent in February.

The IIP had grown by 5.2 per cent in February 2020.

During April-February, IIP contracted by 11.3 per cent compared to one per cent growth in the corresponding period of 2019-20.

Industrial production has been hit due to the COVID-19 pandemic since March last year when it contracted by 18.7 per cent.