Search Result for : Inflation

The Dollar Business Bureau The Reserve Bank of India (RBI), in its sixth bimonthly Monetary Policy Committee meeting, on Wednesday kept the repo rate unchanged at 6%, while hinting on tight monetary conditions due to rising inflation risks. The Bank also increased the Consumer Price Index (CPI) inflation forecast for March-end to 5.1% and estimated that inflation would be in the range of 5.1-5.6% in the first six months of the next fiscal. “On the basis of an assessment of the current and evolving macroeconomic situation, the Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) decided to keep the policy repo rate under the liquidity adjustment facility (LAF) unchanged at 6%,” RBI said in a statement. “Consequently, the reverse repo rate under the LAF remains at 5.75%, and ...

The Dollar Business Bureau The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) on Wednesday raised its retail inflation forecast to 4.2-4.6% for the second half of 2017-18 owing to the firming international prices of oil and uncertainty on the farm output of the kharif crop. In August, in its last monetary policy review, the Central Bank had predicted the Consumer Price Index (CPI)-based retail inflation to be between 4-4.5% in the second half of current fiscal. “The inflation path for the rest of 2017-18 is expected to be shaped by several factors," the bank said in its fourth bi-monthly monetary policy statement 2017-18. As it sees inflation risks, the monetary policy committee (MPC) of RBI also kept the key lending rates – ...

The Dollar Business Bureau Inflation The July inflation, based on monthly WPI, stood at 1.88% (provisional) over July, 2016 as compared to 0.90% (provisional) for June and 0.63% during the corresponding month of the previous year. These are the figures in the first month of the GST roll-out. The index for food articles rose by 6.2% compared to June when prices had declined by 3.47%. The index for non-food articles also saw an increase of 0.6% in July. However fuel and power saw a decline by 1.4 percent to 88.4 (provisional) from 89.7 (provisional) for the previous month. The index for manufactured products saw a marginal increase of 0.2%, textiles declined by 0.3%. Exports In continuation with the positive growth exhibited by exports for the ...

The Dollar Business Bureau Inflation based on Wholesale price index (WPI) fell to 0.90% in June, lowest in eight months as the prices of food commodities and manufactured goods declined. Inflation was 2.17% in May 2017 and (-) 0.09% in June last year, according to the official data released by the Commerce Ministry on Friday. “Build up inflation rate in the financial year so far was -0.44% compared to 3.71% in the corresponding period of the previous year, it said. The prices of major food items such as vegetables, potatoes and pulses witnessed a sharp decline in the month. The prices of potato, pulses and vegetables dropped by 47.32%, 25.47% and 21.16%, respectively. The sharp decline in food items prices last month could be due to the agitation by ...

The Dollar Business Bureau  The Nikkei India Services Purchasing Managers’ Index (PMI) which tracks the services sector output monthly, said that India’s services sector activity increased at the fastest pace in May 2017. This is because of the increased work orders that prompted companies to employ more workforce to handle the workloads. PMI said the Index rose to 52.2 in May compared to 50.2 in April. Although the job growth rate was moderate, it was fastest in almost 4 years. The author of the report, Pollyana De Lima commenting on it said, “The pick-up in service sector growth seen mid-way through the first quarter (FY) suggests that GDP could expand at a faster rate should growth momentum be maintained in June, though ...

By Abin Daya Despite all what the flat-earth proponents might say, the world is surely round. I’m convinced of that! Things do come back a full circle. 64 years after it enacted the Air Corporations Act and nationalised the Air India, the government has decided that it does not want to be in the business of ferrying passengers over air any more. It is looking to privatise the airlines, and the Tatas, from whom the airline was originally taken over, seem to be the most likely suitor. The performance of the domestic air passenger industry is one of the topics in today’s update. However, the main topic for today’s update is India’s export performance for the month of May 2017. While export performance has ...

By Abin Daya The oil situation is more fluid than the fuel itself, despite all the efforts of OPEC and non-OPEC producers. While the extending of the supply cut was to have provided some stability to prices, this does not seem to be the case. Prices of India’s basket of crude have dropped to their lowest levels in 28 weeks. And with the strengthening of rupee, this seems to have given RBI ample opportunities to shore up its FX reserves, which are currently at $381Bn, more than a year’s import worth. The only thing missing here is the drop-in retail fuel prices. Hopefully, it will happen soon. The Provisional Estimates of full year and Q4 GDP and GVA numbers were released on ...

The Dollar Business Bureau  The country’s retail inflation declined sharply to 2.99% in April against the 3.89% in March, on account of lower prices of food items such as vegetables and pulses that recorded a deflationary trend.  In April 2016, the consumer price index (CPI) inflation was at 5.47%.  Pulses and products prices witnessed a sharp decline in April, with a deflation of 15.94%, whereas prices of vegetables fell by 8.59%. In March, the two items recorded a deflation of 12.42 and 7.24%.  The fuel and light segment recorded an inflation of 6.13% in April, higher as compared to 5.56% in March.  Fruit prices grew at 3.78% in April, lower than 9.35% in the previous month, according to the Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation ...