Retail inflation eases to 2.05% in January, factory output improves

Hindustan Times, New Delhi | ByHT Correspondent

Feb 12, 2019 06:04 PM IST

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Retail inflation declined from 2.19 per cent in December last year to 2.05 per cent in January this year, according to the data released by the Central Statistics Office (CSO) on Tuesday.

Workers and customers look through the goods at a wholesale food grain and commodities shop in the Agricultural Product Marketing Committee (APMC) Yard in Bangalore.(AFP file photo)

The CSO figures show acceleration in factory output in December 2018 over the previous month. The factory output in December was recorded at 2.4 per cent compared to 0.5 per cent in November 2018.

The Index of Industrial Production (IIP) for the month of December 2018 stands at 133.7, which is 2.4 per cent higher as compared to the level in the month of December 2017.

This comes a week after the Reserve Bank of India changed its monetary policy stance from “calibrated tightening” to “neutral” while announcing a policy rate cut by 25 basis points. The RBI cited benign headline retail inflation and slowing global growth as the factors for the changes.

The Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) of the RBI also revised its projection of the consumer price inflation (CPI) for the first six months of fiscal year 2019-20 from 3.4-4.2 per cent to 3.2-3.4 per cent.