Retail inflation down to 18-month low of 4.7 pc in April

NEW DELHI: Retail inflation fell to an 18-month low of 4.7 per cent in April mainly due to cooling food prices, government data showed on Friday.

It was for the second month in a row that Consumer Price Index (CPI) based inflation remained within the RBI’s comfort zone of below 6 per cent. The retail inflation based on CPI was 5.66 per cent in March 2023 and 7.79 per cent in the year-ago period. Retail inflation in April is the lowest since October 2021 when it was at 4.48 per cent.

According to the National Statistical Office, the inflation in the food basket was 3.84 per cent in April, as against 4.79 per cent in March and 8.31 per cent in the year-ago period.

Retail inflation rose from 5.7 per cent in December 2022 to 6.4 per cent in February 2023 on the back of higher prices of cereals, milk and fruits and slower deflation in vegetable prices.

Reserve Bank of India has projected the CPI inflation at 5.2 per cent for FY2023-24, with 5.1 per cent in Q1, 5.4 per cent in Q2, 5.4 per cent in Q3, and 5.2 per cent in Q4, and risks evenly balanced.

Industrial production growth slips to 5-month low of 1.1 pc in March

Meanwhile, industrial production growth slipped to five-month low of 1.1 per cent in March from 5.8 per cent in February 2023, mainly due to poor performance of power and manufacturing sectors, according to official data released on Friday.

The previous lowest level of growth was recorded in October 2022 at a contraction of 4.1 per cent.

The factory output growth measured in terms of the Index of Industrial Production (IIP) stood at 2.2 per cent in March 2022. As per the IIP data released by the National Statistical Office (NSO), the manufacturing sector’s output grew 0.5 per cent in March 2023 as against 1.4 per cent a year ago.

Power generation declined by 1.6 per cent in March 2023 against a growth of 6.1 per cent.

Mining output rose by 6.8 per cent during the month under review compared to a growth of 3.9 in the year-ago period.

As per use-based classification, the capital goods segment recorded a growth of 8.1 per cent in March against a growth of 2.4 per cent a year ago.

Consumer durables output during the month declined by 8.4 per cent against a contraction of 3.1 per cent a year ago.

Consumer non-durable goods output too declined by 3.1 per cent against a contraction of 4.4 per cent earlier. Infrastructure/construction goods posted a growth of 5.4 per cent compared to a 6.7 per cent expansion in the same period a year ago.

The data also showed that the output of primary goods logged 3.3 per cent growth in the month against 5.7 per cent in the year-ago period.

The intermediate goods output in March grew by 1 per cent compared to a growth of 1.8 per cent during the corresponding month last year. For fiscal 2022-23, the growth in IIP works out to be 5.1 per cent, down from 11.4 per cent in the preceding year.