Wholesale inflation firms up in Feb on dearer food, fuel

NEW DELHI: Higher food and fuel inflation pushed India’s wholesale inflation to 2.93% in February from 2.76% in January, data released by commerce and industry ministry showed on Thursday.
WPI was 2.74% in February 2018.

“The rate of inflation based on WPI Food Index consisting of ‘Food Articles’ from Primary Articles group and ‘Food Product’ from Manufactured Products group increased from 1.84% in January to 3.29% in February,” the government said in a statement.

Fuel and power inflation which has a weightage of 13.15% in WPI, grew to 2.23% in February, as against 1.85% in January.

Inflation of primary articles, which includes kitchen essentials like potato, onion, fruits, and milk was 4.84% compared with 3.54% in January.

The government also revised downwards the wholesale inflation for December to 3.46% from 3.8% earlier.