Winning Bizness Desk
Mumbai. Retail inflation has broken the record of the last 3 months owing to an increase in the prices of food items in January 2023. The government on Monday released the retail inflation rate data based on the Consumer Price Index. This is also above the maximum limit of the Reserve Bank of India. The Reserve Bank of India has fixed a target to keep the retail inflation rate below 4 percent. At the same time, there is a limit to keep the scope of inflation between 2 to 6 percent. Before January, retail inflation in December 2022 was at 5.72 percent. Only the Food Price Index has about 40 percent stake in the country's Consumer Price Index. This means that the prices of food items are a big factor in increasing or decreasing the inflation in the country. If the figures for January 2023 are seen, then the food inflation rate in January has been 5.94 percent. While the food inflation rate in December 2022 was 4.19 percent.
Vegetables get cheaper...
If we understand the Food Price Index in detail, then the price of vegetables has decreased in January. The inflation rate in the category of vegetables has been negative at 11.70. On the other hand, prices have increased in cereals and other food grains and the inflation rate has been 16.12 percent. Not only this, the inflation rate of milk and other dairy products has been 8.79 percent, eggs 8.78 percent, meat and fish 6.04 percent, spices 21.09 percent and pulses and other products 4.27 percent. The price of petrol and diesel remains at a constant height. In this item, the burden of the common man's pocket is increasing. In January 2023, the inflation rate in the 'Fuel and Light' category was 10.84 percent. Apart from this, the inflation rate of paan-tobacco has been 3.07 percent and the inflation rate of housing has been 4.62 percent.
What RBI saying ?
Meanwhile, regarding inflation, the RBI has said in its estimate that the average retail inflation rate during the financial year 2023-24 could be 5.3 percent. For the financial year 2022-23 also, the estimate of average retail inflation has been reduced from 6.7 percent to 6.5 percent. However, for this assessment of inflation, the RBI has considered the average price of monsoon normal and crude oil at $ 95. To control inflation, the repo rate has been increased once again in the MPC meeting. RBI has increased the interest rates by 0.25 percent. After which the policy rate has increased to 6.50 percent.
