India‘s wholesale inflation stepped out of the deflationary zone for the first time since March 2023 as it rose to 0.26 percent in November, data released by the commerce ministry on December 14 showed. Wholesale Price Index (WPI) inflation was at -0.52 percent in October 2023 and 6.12 percent in November 2022.
At 0.26 percent, the latest wholesale inflation print is the highest in eight months.
The WPI data comes two days after the statistics ministry said the headline retail inflation rose to a three-month high of 5.55 percent in November, still down 189 basis points from the 15-month high of 7.44 percent in July. Wholesale inflation has zoomed 149 basis points over the same period.
One basis point is one-hundredth of a percentage point.
Like the Consumer Price Index, the WPI too rose by 0.5 percent month-on-month in November, driven by a 1.9 percent rise in the food index. Within food, the biggest push, as expected, came from vegetables, with a 16.5 percent month-on-month surge in price index, thanks to a 41.3 percent jump in the index of onions. Other food items to register a sequential increase in price included fruits (up 1.7 percent), wheat (1.6 percent), and pulses (1.4 percent), jacking up the wholesale food inflation to 4.69 percent in November from 1.07 percent in October.
At the same time, prices of manufactured products changed little, with their index rising a mere 0.1 percent MoM. Keeping manufactured products’ inflation in check was price weakness in key raw materials, with the price index for semi-finished steel down 1.5 percent MoM and that of basic metals 0.9 percent lower compared to October.