India’s wholesale price index-based inflation dropped to 2.17% in May from 3.85% in April. The central government on Wednesday released information about the wholesale price index with 2011-2012 as the base year.
A fall in food, fuel and power prices contributed to the decline. Wholesale food prices fell by 2.2% against 1.16% in the previous month. Similarly, fuel and power inflation dropped to 11.69% as against 18.5% in April, reported Moneycontrol.
The overall index for the “Primary Articles” group declined by 1.5%. This group includes food articles, non-food articles, minerals and natural gas. The index for the “Food Articles” group declined by 1.2% to 137.7 from 139.4 in April. This was because the prices of fish, eggs, pulses and tea dropped sharply. However, the price of peas, beef and buffalo meat and poultry chicken increased, said the government data.
The index for the “Non-Food Articles” group fell by 1.2% from 121.2 in April to 119.8 in May because of lower prices for raw rubber, guar seed, cotton seed and raw jute, among other commodities.
The index for the minerals group, on the other hand, jumped by 1.9% from 112.7 to 114.8. Higher prices of garnet, copper concentrate, iron ore and zinc concentrate contributed to the rise.
Apart from primary articles, the WPI is calculated after considering fuel and power index as well as manufactured products. The overall fuel and power index dropped by 2.1% from 92.8 in April to 90.8 in May. A slump in the prices of liquid petroleum gas, naphtha and petrol contributed to the trend. However, the index for the manufactured products group rose by 0.4% from 112.1 to 112.6.
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