The Hindu Business Line : Inflation up on costlier petro products

A surge in the prices of petroleum products pushed up the annual wholesale price index-based inflation (WPI) rate 7.76 per cent for the week ended November 6.

The year-on-year inflation index shot up from the previous week's level of 7.06 per cent, even as there was a decline in the prices of primary and manufactured products, according to the data released by the Ministry of Commerce and Industry on Friday.

According to the WPI data, the index was up 0.4 per cent to 190.3 points, despite cheaper non-food articles and some of the manufactured products, mainly food items.

The index of the primary articles' group fell by 0.3 per cent to 192.4 points, even as food articles became costlier.

Besides costlier transport fuels and cooking gas, there was a 4 per cent hike in the price of furnace oil, which pushed up substantially the fuel, power, lights and lubricants' group index by over 3 per cent to 291.3 points.

The manufactured products' group index, however, fell by 0.3 per cent to 167.1 points due to cheaper food products, wood, chemicals, non-metallic minerals, and basic metals.

Among the primary articles' group, the food articles' group index rose by 0.2 per cent to 192.3 due to higher prices of beef and buffalo meat (8 per cent), poultry chicken (5 per cent), barley (2 per cent) and moong and ragi (1 per cent each).

Prices, however, fell in the case of arhar and bajra (2 per cent each) and maize and condiments and spices (1 per cent each).

The index for non-food articles' plummeted by 1.4 per cent to 184.4 points due to cheaper soyabean (19 per cent), fodder (13 per cent), cottonseed (3 per cent) and raw silk and raw cotton (1 per cent each).

But prices moved up for mesta (6 per cent), copra and raw jute (4 per cent), gingelly seed (3 per cent), raw rubber (2 per cent) and skins and groundnut seed (1 per cent each).

The food products' group index declined sharply by 1.5 per cent to 174.8 points due to lower prices of oil cakes (10 per cent), gur (5 per cent) and ghee (1 per cent), while khandsari and groundnut oil became costlier by 1 per cent.

The index for the wood and wood products' group declined by 0.6 per cent to 178.7 points due to a 1 per cent fall in the price of timber planks.

The chemicals and chemical products' group index fell by 0.1 per cent to 182 points on account of a 5-per cent decline in the price of benzene, even as price of purified terephthalic acid shot up by 4 per cent.

The index of non-metallic mineral products' group was down by 0.6 per cent 154.1 points owing to a 1-per cent dip in the cement prices.

The base metals alloys and metal products index fell marginally to 206 points due to cheaper zinc (5 per cent) and ms bars and rounds (2 per cent).

The index of machinery and machine tools' group rose by 0.2 per cent to 141.8 points due to higher prices for boilers, its parts and accessories (4 per cent), switch gears (2 per cent) and other pumps (1 per cent).

The Government also revised the point-to-point inflation to 8.15 per cent for the week ended September 11, against the provisional figure of 7.87 per cent.

The WPI stood corrected at 189.7 points during the second week of September compared to the provisional figure of 189.2 points.