WPI inflation: Wholesale inflation rises to 1.84 per cent in September, boosted by surge in food prices

New Delhi| Wholesale price inflation rose to 1.84 percent in September as vegetables and other foods became costlier. Wholesale Price Index (WPI) based inflation was 1.31 per cent in August. In September last year, it had decreased by 0.07 per cent. Food inflation rose to 11.53 percent in September, compared to 3.11 percent in August, according to government data released on Monday.

This was due to vegetable inflation, which had risen by 48.73 per cent in September. In August, it had decreased by 10.01 per cent. Potato inflation remained high at 78.13 and onion at 78.82 per cent in September. The fuel and power category saw a deflation of 4.05 per cent in September, compared with a deflation of 0.67 per cent in August.

The Ministry of Commerce and Industry said in a statement that the positive rate of inflation in September, 2024 is mainly due to increase in prices of food items, food products, other manufacturing, manufacturing of motor vehicles, trailers and semi-trailers, manufacturing of machinery and equipment etc

The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) mainly keeps retail inflation in mind while formulating monetary policy. The RBI maintained the key interest rate or repo rate at 6.5 per cent in its monetary policy review this month. Retail inflation figures are also to be released today itself.

However manufactured products which account for 64.2 per cent of the WPI index showed softening prices. Its rate decreased from 1.22 per cent in the month of August to 1 per cent in September. The reason for this was the low prices of textiles, wood products, chemical and pharmaceutical and rubber products. However, prices of foods produced from factories showed an increase of 5.5% in September.