Winning Bizness Desk

Mumbai. On the front of inflation, the common man has got a big relief. Retail inflation eased to an 11-month low of 5.88 per cent in November from 6.77 per cent in October on softening food prices. For the first time after 11 consecutive months, the inflation rate has come within the RBI's fixed limit of 2-6%. Food inflation also declined in November and stood at 4.67%. Food inflation was 7.01% in October. Data released by the National Statistics Office showed that consumer price-based inflation, or retail inflation, remained above the upper band of the Reserve Bank of India's 2-6 per cent target for each month this year. But for the first time in November, it has managed to stay within the prescribed limit of RBI. Actually, RBI has got the responsibility of keeping the retail inflation rate between two and six percent.

RBI had hiked the repo rate

In order to control the rising inflation, RBI had continuously increased the repo rate since May this year, due to which it has become expensive to take loan from the bank. The Reserve Bank has so far increased the repo rate by 225 basis points, taking it to 6.25%. Food prices account for about 40% of the Consumer Price Index (CPI) basket in India's economy. Consumer Price Index (CPI) based retail inflation was 6.77 per cent in October 2022 and 4.91 per cent in November last year. According to the NSO data, the food inflation came down to 4.67 per cent last month from 7.01 per cent in the previous month. Retail inflation had remained above the central bank's tolerable limit of 6 per cent since January. Now it has come down to the lowest level of 11 months. In December 2021, the retail inflation rate was 5.66 percent.