Unprecedented rise in potato prices pushes up inflation  Food inflation soared to 15.58 per cent for the week ended November 14 in the wake of an unprecedented rise in the prices of potato and other essential items. Official data based on the Wholesale Price Index (WPI) released here on Thursday for the week revealed that while potato prices have more than doubled in the past 12 months, other basic food...

Amid concerns that the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) could tighten its monetary policy in January 2010, inflation during October more than doubled to 1.34 per cent, as compared to 0.5 per cent a month earlier, mostly due to the rising cost of essential food items. In the first monthly data released by the government on Saturday, the build-up inflation in the financial year so far was 6.13 per cent...

For a man who will inherit vast tracts of fertile farmland in Punjab, India's grain bowl, Jaswinder Singh made what seemed to him a logical career move -- he took a job with a telecoms company in New Delhi. "I can't go back to the village after an M.B.A. Delhi has more money, better quality of life. The job is more satisfying, and you don't depend on the weather or...

Planning Commission Deputy Chairman Montek Singh Ahluwalia today said the food price inflation would come down by the end of the current fiscal. "Food price inflation by the end of the current fiscal would be significantly lower than what it is right now," Ahluwalia said while speaking at the India Economic Summit here. Citing the reason for high food inflation, he said, at the end of a bad monsoon, particularly...

In a more realistic and less confusing picture of the situation, the new wholesale price data monitoring system introduced on Thursday revealed that inflation of food articles soared by 13.39 per cent year-on-year during the week ended October 24, mainly owing to a surge in potato and Onion prices, even as inflation for primary articles declined by 0.11 per cent on a weekly basis. As per the new data collation system,...