New Delhi
According to the official data released on Wednesday, retail inflation slowed down to 4.31 percent in January due to a decrease in the prices of food items. Retail inflation slowed down to 4.31 percent in January due to a decrease in food items. Consumer Price Index (CPI) based retail inflation was 5.22 percent in December and 5.1 percent in January 2024. This was confirmed in the official data released on Wednesday.
Inflation of food items was 6.02 percent, which was 8.39 percent in December and 8.3 percent in the month ago. The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has been asked to ensure that retail inflation remains at 4 percent with a margin of 2 percent. Earlier, news agency Reuters, in one of their reports, had expected consumer inflation to come at a five -month low of 4.60% in January 2025. December 2024 retail inflation was recorded at 5.22%.
The speed of industrial production slowed down to 3.2 percent in December
In December 2024, the growth rate of industrial production of the country slowed to 3.2 percent due to poor performance of mining and manufacturing sectors. This information was given in the official data released on Wednesday. Industrial production increased by 4.4 percent in December 2023. Along with this, the government has also revised the Industrial Production Index (IIP) data of November 2024 to five percent. It was stated to be 5.2 percent in the temporary estimate released last month.
According to data released by the National Statistics Office (NSO), the production of manufacturing sector increased by three percent in December 2024, which increased by 4.6 percent in the same period of a year ago. The growth rate of mining production in the period under review declined to 2.6 percent while it was 5.2 percent in the same period a year ago. However, power generation increased to 6.2 percent in the month under review, which was just 1.2 percent in December 2023.
Four percent increase in industrial production during April-December period
With this, industrial production has increased by four percent in the first nine months of the first nine months of the current financial year i.e. April-December, which is less than the 6.2 percent increase recorded in the same period of a year ago. Today, this decline in inflation data will give very important relief to those Indian families who are troubled by the ever -increasing cost of living and spending a lot of money on food.
The report quoted economists as saying that the credit for this decline in inflation is the latest winter yield in the local markets. According to the report, the fall in prices of vegetables played a major role in the fall in inflation. The Reserve Bank of India, while taking steps towards encouraging economic growth and controlling inflation, reduced the repo rate by cutting 25 basis points from 6.5% to 6.25% at the recent monetary policy committee (MPC) meeting.