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Bucking the downward trend, India’s retail inflation based on the Consumer Price Index (CPI) rose to a three-month high of 5.55 per cent in November 2023 on firming food prices, including vegetables and cereals. Though it remains within the Reserve Bank of India’s (RBI’s) comfort zone of less than 6 per cent. The RBI has been tasked by the government to ensure retail inflation remains at 4 per cent with a margin of 2 per cent on either side. CPI was 4.87 per cent in October 2023 and 5.88 per cent in November 2022. The previous high was 6.83 per cent in August 2023 and inflation had been on a decline since then.

As per the data released by the Ministry of Statistics & Programme Implementation (MoSPI), the consumer food price inflation (CFPI) or inflation in the food basket rose to 8.7 per cent in November as against 6.6 per cent in the previous month and 4.6 per cent in November last year. Food basket has about 50 per cent weightage in CPI. The data also showed that Rural CPI (General) in November 2023 stood at 5.85 per cent as against 5.12 per cent in October. The Urban CPI (General) stood at 5.26 per cent in November as against 4.62 per cent in October. The index value for Rural, Urban and Combined CPI (General) stood at 188.2, 184.2 and 186.3 respectively, in November 2023.

As per the data, Pulses prices surged to 20.23 per cent, vegetables inflation reached 17.70 per cent, and fruit prices rose by about 10.95 per cent year-on-year during November. Cereals inflation remained stubborn at 10.27 per cent in November, while meat and fish inflation fell to 2.15 per cent. Milk inflation dropped to 5.75 per cent, and egg prices grew 5.90 per cent. Sugar and confectionary prices accelerated to 6.55 per cent, while spices inflation slightly eased to 21.55 per cent. Oils and fats prices recorded a drop of 15.03 per cent year-on-year in November.

The price data are collected from selected 1114 urban Markets and 1181 villages covering all States/UTs through personal visits by field staff of Field Operations Division of NSO, MoSPI on a weekly roster. During the month of November 2023, NSO collected prices from 99.9 per cent villages and 98.6 per cent urban markets while the market-wise prices reported therein were 90.0 per cent for rural and 92.2 per cent for urban.