Food inflation rose marginally to 16.35% for the week ended March 20 mainly on account of high prices of pulses and milk. The inflation stood at four-month low of 16.22% for the week ended March 13. The rise in food prices is mainly driven by pulses, which became dearer by 31.55%. Milk prices rose by 18.74% on the yearly basis. On weekly basis, the index for food articles rose by...

Wholesale price-based inflation rose to 9.89 per cent in February from 8.56 per cent in the previous month due to increase in prices of certain food items such as sugar and the hike in excise duty on fuel announced last month. Sugar prices rose by 55.47 per cent in February year-on-year while potatoes turned costlier by 30 per cent and pulses by 35.58 per cent. Among fuel items, Petrol Prices...

With food prices showing no signs of abating and the impact of the fuel price hike in the latest budget making its presence felt, inflation moved fast towards the double-digit mark, touching 9.89 per cent in February, the highest in 16 months. The wholesale price-based inflation stood at 8.56 per cent in January. This could well cross the double-digit mark in March, experts said. Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee had earlier said the...

YELLING dementedly, seven lawmakers mobbed the chairman of the Indian parliament’s upper house on March 8th and tore at the document, containing the women’s reservation bill, he was reading from. Yet the bill passed the next day, with the two-thirds majority needed to change India’s constitution. With broad political support, including from the Congress party that leads India’s coalition government and the main opposition Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), the bill...

WELL before Budget 2010-11 was presented, inflation had emerged as the principal economic problem in the country. With food-price inflation running at close to 20 per cent, even the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government at the Centre had been forced to recognise it as a problem that deserved as much attention as the objective of achieving a 9 or 10 per cent rate of growth, if not more. In fact,...