New Delhi, January 14: The Wholesale Price Index (WPI)-based inflation rose to 2.59 per cent from 0.59 per cent in November, according to the data released by the Ministry of Statistics and Program Implementation. While in the same month last year, WPI stood at 3.46 per cent. The data comes a day after the government data showed that consumer price inflation accelerated to 7.35 per cent.
The food inflation rate jumped to 13.24 during the month from 11 per cent in November and 9.80 per cent in October. However, the major driver again is onion, which witnessed an inflation rate of 455.8 per cent compared to 172.3 per cent in November. The inflation in the vegetable category rose sharply to 69.69 per cent from 45.32 per cent in the previous month. Pulses also saw an inflation jump to 13.11 per cent, which was 16.59 per cent a month earlier
On the contrary, for the non-food articles the inflation rate rose to 7.72 per cent from 1.93 per cent and 2.93 per cent in November and October respectively. However, the inflation in manufactured food products also accelerated to 6.89 per cent in December from 5.05 per cent in November.
The consumer inflation data released yesterday breached the RBI medium-term target for the third month in a row. The apex bank has reduced the benchmark rate by 135 basis points so far but in the last monetary policy meeting held in December, the RBI decided not to go for any other rate cut, considering the spiking inflation rate.
The economy is witnessing a slowdown and the rate of growth is at 4.5 per cent, which is the lowest in the last six years. One of the biggest attributing factors for the ongoing economic the slowdown is weak consumption, job cuts and slowdown all across the sectors. After these inflation numbers are at the highest since August 2014, one thing is pretty clear that the upcoming monetary policy meeting of the RBI on February 6, just a few days after finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman presents the budget is not going to cut the repo rate further.