Food prices likely to rise more; WPI inflation surges to 2.59 pc in December 2019

News Bharati    14-Jan-2020 14:56:00 PM
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New Delhi, January 14: Aligning to the increase in food prices like onion, potato and more amid the degrading economic circumstances, the WPI based inflation surged to 2.59 per cent in December, as against 0.58 per cent in November. The annual inflation, based on monthly wholesale price index (WPI), was at 3.46 per cent during the same month a year ago in December 2018.
  
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The rate of price rise for food articles rose to 13.12 per cent during December as against 11 per cent a month earlier, while for non-food articles it rose nearly four-fold to 7.72 per cent from 1.93 per cent in November, showed the data released by the Ministry of Commerce and Industry on Tuesday.
 
Among food articles, vegetable prices surged by 69.69 per cent mainly on account of onion, which witnessed 455.83 per cent jump in prices, followed by potato at 44.97 per cent. This is after the consumer price index based retail inflation, as per data released on Monday, spiked to over a 5-year high of 7.35 per cent in December, again due to costlier food products.
 
The economy is struggling against the slowest pace of expansion in more than six years, due to weak consumption and thousands of job cuts amid weakness across sectors. The government has forecast a GDP growth rate of 5 per cent for the economy in the financial year ending in March 2020, which marks the slowest pace of expansion in 11 years.