February wholesale inflation more than doubles from January to 4.17%, hits 27-month high
Wholesale prices of fuel and food articles, which showed negative inflation in January, turned positive last month.
India’s wholesale inflation for February more than doubled to 4.17% from 2.03% in January, government data showed on Monday. The wholesale inflation last month jumped to a 27-month high, since November 2018, according to Bloomberg.
The uptick came mainly on the back of wholesale fuel and power prices where inflation rose to 0.58% in February from -4.78% in January, the data showed. In case of wholesale food index too, the number jumped from -0.26% in January to 3.31% in February.
The wholesale food index contains “food articles” from primary articles group and “food products” from manufactured products group. Prices of cereals, pulses, vegetables, onion and fruits went up significantly in the wholesale markets.
As for manufactured products, wholesale inflation jumped from 5.13% to 5.81%, according to the data.
Last week, data showed that retail inflation had also risen in February to 5.03%, after easing for three consecutive months. Retail inflation for January was at 4.06%.