India’s wholesale inflation based on the all India Wholesale Price Index (WPI) eased to 3.85 per cent in February from 4.73 per cent in January, showed data released by the Commerce Ministry on Tuesday. This is lower than the Reuters forecast of 4 per cent. According to the data released, the decline in the rate of inflation in February is primarily due to the fall in prices of crude petroleum & natural gas, non-food articles, food products, minerals, computer, electronic & optical products, chemicals & chemical products, electrical equipment and motor vehicles, trailers & semi-trailers.
“The Food Index consisting of ‘Food Articles’ from Primary Articles group and ‘Food Product’ from Manufactured Products group have increased from 171.2 in January 2023 to 171.3 in February 2023. The rate of inflation based on WPI Food Index decreased from 2.95 per cent in January 2023 to 2.76 per cent in February 2023,” the commerce ministry said. For the primary articles segment, the inflation rate eased to 3.28 per cent from 3.88 per cent in the previous month. The month over month change in WPI for the month of February 2023 stood at 0.20 per cent as compared to January 2023. The WPI based inflation rate was 13.43 per cent in February 2022.
According to the data, WPI based inflation of food articles was at 3.81 per cent in February as against 2.38 in January. While cereals was at 13.95 per cent down from 15.46 per cent in January, wheat was at 18.54 per cent from January’s 23.63 per cent. Inflation in pulses was 2.59 per cent, in vegetables it was -21.53 per cent and eggs, meat & fish was at 1.49 per cent. Inflation in crude petroleum & natural gas was 14.47 per cent in February down from 23.79 per cent in January. Fuel and power inflation declined to 14.82 per cent as against 15.15 per cent in the previous month. Inflation for manufactured products was 1.94 per cent in February down from 2.99 per cent in January.
The deceleration in WPI comes in line with the dip in CPI inflation which was released on Monday. API inflation in February declined from January’s 6.52 per cent to 6.44 per cent. WPI had climbed by 15.88 per cent in May 2022, the highest since September 1991.
