Retail inflation for industrial workers eases to 5.78 pc in July

Retail inflation for industrial workers eased to 5.78 per cent in July from 6.16 per cent in June 2022 due to lower prices of certain food items, according to the government data released on Wednesday.

”Year-on-year inflation for the month (July 2022) stood at 5.78 per cent compared to 6.16 per cent for the previous month (June 2022) and 5.26 per cent during the corresponding month (July 2021) a year before,” a labour ministry statement said.

Similarly, it said that the food inflation stood at 5.96 per cent against 6.73 per cent of the previous month and 4.91 per cent during the corresponding month a year ago.

The Labour Bureau, an attached office of the Ministry of Labour & Employment, has been compiling Consumer Price Index for Industrial Workers (CPI-IW) every month on the basis of retail prices collected from 317 markets spread over 88 industrially important centres in the country.

The index is compiled for 88 centres and All-India and released on the last working day of succeeding month.

The All-India CPI-IW for July, 2022 increased by 0.7 points and stood at 129.9 points. It was 129.2 points in June 2022.

On one-month percentage change, it increased by 0.54 per cent with respect to previous month compared to an increase of 0.90 per cent recorded between corresponding months a year ago.

The maximum upward pressure in current index came from housing group contributing 0.37 percentage points to the total change.

At item level, prices of cooking gas, electricity (domestic), potato, onion, gourd, mango, banana, chillies (dry), cooked meal, wheat, wheat atta, arhar dal, tur dal etc. are responsible for the rise in index.

However, this increase was largely checked by tomato, poultry chicken, soyabeen oil, sunflower oil, mustard oil, palm oil, rice, apple, lemon, radish, garlic, drum stick etc. putting downward pressure on the index.

At centre level, Udham Singh Nagar recorded a maximum increase of 3.8 points followed by Jalpaiguri and Jalandhar with 3.3 and 3.2 points respectively.

Among others, nine centres recorded increase between 2 and 2.9 points, 32 centres between 1 and 1.9 points and 24 centres between 0.1 and 0.9 points. On the contrary, Salem recorded a maximum decrease of 4.1 points.

Among others, two centres recorded decrease between 2 and 2.9 points, 3 centres between 1 and 1.9 points and 11 centres between 0.1 and 0.9 points. Rest of three centres’ indices remained stationary.