Rising food prices have pushed the consumer price index (CPI) up 5.5% during October with Shillong recording the maximum increase of 14.9%.
This is much higher than the latest WPI-based inflation, which was 3.11% last week compared with 5.39% during the same period last year. Analysts are of the view that the reason for the higher CPI is mainly because of the rising food article prices in the retail market.
Among the four metros, Kolkata witnessed the maximum price of 8.5% in the CPI, followed by Chennai (6.5%), Mumbai (5.4%) and Delhi (4.6%), according to the official data on Consumer Price Index for Urban Non-Manual Employees (CPI-UNME) released on Monday.
The rise in the all India general index has been attribute to increase in prices of food, beverages and tobacco products. Urban centres where the price rise during the month was minimum were Mangalore and Nagpur ( 2.9% each).
The average consumer price rise?measured at 59 urban centres?was 5.5% in October, higher by about 3% of wholesale prices, according to the latest WPI figures released by the government. As compared to September 2007, the average price index moved up by around 30 points to 520 during the month.
The increase in CPI is less than 4% for 11 centres, 4-5% for 16 centres, 5.1-7% for 21 centres and 7.1% and above, for 11 centres. As many as 33 centres have lower annual percentage increase as compared to that of the all-India figure of 5.5%. Twenty-four centres have recorded higher percentage increase as compared to the all-India average and 2 centres are equal to the all-India average.