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With rising prices of edible oils and protein rich items, India’s retail inflation jumped to a six-month high of 6.3 per cent in May from 4.23 per cent in April. The inflation has breached the comfort level of the Reserve Bank of India (RBI). The government has asked the Reserve Bank to keep the retail inflation at 4 per cent with a margin of 2 per cent on either side. CPI inflation has breached the upper band of the inflation target about 10 times since the first meeting of the Monetary Policy Committee (MPC), which decides the key interest rate, in October 2016. Besides, food inflation soared from 1.96 per cent to 5.01 per cent in May.

The National Statistical Office (NSO) under Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation in its data has showed that the Rural CPI (General) in May 2021 stood at 6.48 per cent as against 3.75 per cent in April. The Urban CPI (General) stood at 6.04 per cent in May as against 4.71 per cent in April. The index value for Rural, Urban and Combined CPI (General) stood at 161.0, 159.7 and 160.4, respectively, in May 2021.

As per the data on CPI, the steepest price rise was witnessed in the 'oils and fat' segment, which on an annual b