-Livemint.com * Despite the slowdown in rural demand, the spike in food prices is not showing any signs of cooling. Here’s why * This is the best time for the budget to address the volatility in food prices. Reliable market intelligence on crop production and timely advisories to farmers can help stabilize prices New Delhi: For more than five years now, the Indian countryside has only heard stories of anguish. Consecutive years of...

-Livemint.com The government’s inordinately large food stockpiles have resulted in an artificial market scarcity On 7 January, the ministry of statistics released India’s advance estimates of national income for 2019-20, pegging the economy’s growth rate this financial year at 5%. Based on data available for the first two quarters, this seems an overestimate. Most indicators suggest that actual growth may be lower than 5%. This is bad news, especially since there is...

-The Indian Express Vegetable inflation jumping to an over six-year high and pulses inflation rising to a more than 3-year high were the key reasons driving retail inflation. Wholesale price index (WPI)-based inflation surged to a seven-month high of 2.59 per cent in December 2019, as against 0.58 per cent in November, due to a sharp rise in prices of food articles like onions and potatoes, according to the data released by...

-Scroll.in The figures breached the tolerance band of the Reserve Bank of India’s Monetary Policy Committee Retail inflation rose to 7.35% in December from 5.54% the month before, government data showed on Monday. The rate of inflation exceeded the tolerance band of the Reserve Bank of India’s Monetary Policy Committee, Bloomberg reported. At the current level, retail inflation is at its highest since July 2014. Inflation was pushed up by a rise in...

-Newsclick.in Even as the growth rate of the Indian economy is slowing down, and the index of industrial production (IIP) is actually showing negative growth for three consecutive months, August to October (over the corresponding months a year ago), the inflation rate in the economy has started accelerating. Significantly, the acceleration in inflation has been the sharpest precisely during these very months when the contraction in industrial output has been the...