India's Wholesale Price Inflation for October Rises to Over 12%

Higher prices of primary goods, food items, and costly transport fuel stiffened India's October wholesale inflation on both sequential and year-on-year basis.

(Photo: Reuters)

Higher prices of primary goods, food items, and costly transport fuel stiffened India's October wholesale inflation on both sequential and year-on-year basis.

The annual rate of inflation, based on wholesale prices, rose to 12.54 percent last month from 10.66 percent in September.

Similarly, on a year-over-year basis, the Wholesale Price Index (WPI) data furnished by the Ministry of Commerce and Industry has risen exponentially over October 2020, when it stood at 1.31 percent.

"The high rate of inflation in October is primarily due to the rise in prices of mineral oils, basic metals, food products, crude petroleum and natural gas, chemicals and chemical products etc., as compared to the corresponding month of the previous year," the ministry said in its review of 'Index Numbers of Wholesale Price in India' for October.

"The month over month change in WPI index for October 2021 (as compared to September 2021) was 2.28 per cent," it said.

As per the data, the primary articles segment, which has one of the highest weightage in the WPI, increased at a faster rate of 5.20 percent in October as compared to 4.10 percent reported for September 2021.

In the fuel and power segment, which has a weightage of 13.15 percent, the rise in inflation was recorded at 37.18 percent from 24.81 percent in September 2021.

However, cost of manufactured products, which has a weightage of 64.23 percent, increased at a faster rate of 12.04 percent from 11.41 percent.

Similarly, the growth rate of WPI food index consisting of food articles from the primary articles group and food products from the manufactured products group rose to 3.06 percent from 1.14 percent.