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...
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New data system reveals yearly food inflation at 13.39 per cent by Ashok Dasgupta
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,...
More »Welcome new price index
The government has decided to release data for manufactured goods in the Wholesale Price Index (WPI) with a monthly frequency, even as data on primary goods and fuels would continue to be released every week. Further, the revamped WPI would cover about 900 items instead of 435 at present, and the base year is being brought forward from 1993-94 to 2004-05. These changes would make the price index more reliable...
More »Rising prices: What is the govt doing? by Paranjoy Guha Thakurta
The spectre of inflation has returned to haunt India. It is not even six months since the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government returned to power but its inability to control food prices is arguably its single biggest failure till now. The inflation rate will eventually come down sometime in the (hopefully) not-too-distant future and the government will surely take credit for bringing prices down as and when that happens. But...
More »Skyrocketing prices may be bad news but the worst is yet to come!
Between 2005 and 2007, the world saw doubling of the prices of wheat, coarse grains, rice and oilseed crops and they continued rising in early 2008. It has been predicted by an OECD study (2008) that on average over the coming ten-year-period, prices in real terms of cereals, rice and oilseeds are projected to be 10% to 35% higher than in the past decade. This means more trouble for the...
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