India’s retail inflation falls to an 18-month low of 4.7%

Retail inflation in India fell to an 18-month low of 4.70 per cent in April, according to statistics issued by the National Statistical Office (NSO) on Friday. The consumer price index (CPI) in April stayed below the Reserve Bank of India’s medium-term objective of 4+/- 2 per cent at 4.70.

For the second month in a row, the country’s headline inflation remained within the RBI’s tolerance range. In March, India’s headline inflation rate was 5.66%. The consumer price index (CFPI) fell to 3.84 per cent in April, down from 4.79 per cent in March. Meanwhile, rural inflation in April was 4.68 per cent, while urban inflation was 4.85 per cent.

In order to keep inflation within the tolerance band, the RBI has raised the primary lending rate, the repo rate, by a factor of 250 since last May. The repo rate set by the RBI now stands at 6.50 per cent. According to NSO figures issued independently, India’s industrial output increased by 1.1% in March. In March of last year, factory output increased by 2.2 per cent, as estimated by the Index of Industrial Production (IIP).

According to the statistics, output from manufacturing climbed by 0.5% in March, while production from mining increased by 6.8% in the same month. In March, India’s electrical power generation fell by 1.6 per cent. The IIP increased by 5.1 per cent in fiscal 2023, compared to 11.4 per cent in FY 2021-22.