New Delhi: India’s retail inflation ticked up to 2.86% in March as consumers spent more to buy food items and fuel, government data showed on Friday. The consumer price index (CPI)-based retail inflation was at 2.57 per cent in February this year. On yearly basis, it was 4.28 per cent in March 2018. Retail inflation remains well within the RBI’s comfort level of 4 per cent for about eight months now, coming down from 4.17 per cent in July 2018.
The overall food inflation, measured as change in prices of articles in food basket, rose to 0.3 per cent in March, against (-) 0.66 per cent in February, data from the Central Statistics Office (CSO) showed. However, fruits and vegetables continued to register deflation at (-)5.88 per cent and (-)4.90 per cent, respectively. Industrial output growth was flat at 0.1% in February on account of slowdown in the manufacturing sector, official data showed.
Factory output as measured in terms of the Index of Industrial Production (IIP) had grown by 6.9 per cent in February 2018. During April-February 2018-19, industrial output grew at 4 per cent as against 4.3 per cent in the same period of the previous fiscal, according to CSO.
