Wholesale inflation rises to 4-month high of 3.18% in April

Inflation in food articles rose by 1.9 percent while that of non-food articles declined by 0.9 percent.

New Delhi: Inflation based on wholesale prices rose to a 4-month high of 3.18 percent in April on costlier food articles, including vegetables. WPI inflation rose to a 4-month high of 3.18 percent in April as compared to 2.47 percent in March, government data showed on Monday.

According to a government data released today, inflation in food articles rose by 1.9 percent to 139.8 from 137.2 for the previous month while that of non-food articles declined by 0.9 percent to 119.1 from 120.2 for the previous month.

The index for crude petroleum and natural gas rose by 2.4 percent to 82.1 from 80.2 for the previous month due to higher price of natural gas (4%) and crude petroleum (2%), a government release showed.

The WPI inflation for February was revised upwards to 2.74 percent from the provisional estimate of 2.48 percent.

In its first monetary policy review for the fiscal, the Reserve Bank last month maintained status-quo on interest rate citing inflationary concerns.

Data on retail inflation is scheduled to be released later in the day. RBI mainly takes into account retail inflation data while formulating monetary policy.

The central bank revised downward forecast for retail inflation to 4.7-5.1 percent for April-September and 4.4 percent for October-March.

With PTI Inputs