CPI inflation at 15.65%, 3 times higher than WPI

Consumer price inflation of commodities consumed by agricultural and rural labourers increased to 15.65 per cent in November, over three times the inflation based wholesale prices for the same month.

Wholesale price inflation stood at 4.78 per cent in November. The consumer price index for agricultural labourer and rural labourers were 13.73 per cent and 13.51 per cent in October.

The divergence between wholesale price inflation and retail inflation is due to higher weightage of food prices in consumer price indices. It reflects faster rise in the prices of food items.

Food inflation stood at 19.95 per cent for the first week of December.

Finance minister Pranab Mukherjee had earlier said that there is a tendency for wholesale price index and consumer price indices to converge after some months, but this time it is not happening.

Mukherjee said the rise was more evident in the Consumer Price Index than in the WPI as 'food items have higher weight in CPI, whether it is for industrial workers or it is for the rural labour'.

Food articles have a weight of about 43-48 per cent in the CPI, the minister added, pointing out the difference in the two indices.

The rise in index varied from state to state. In case of agricultural labourers four states reflected an increase in index in between 11 to 15 points, while seven states saw an increase between 6 and 10 points. And the other nine states saw low variation between 1 and 5 points, a labour bureau release said.

Punjab with 579 points topped the index table whereas Manipur with the 446 points stood at the bottom.

Spiralling prices of essential commodities like rice, wheat atta, pulses, mustard oil, eggs, milk, and vegetables among other items pushed up the index numbers of Jammu & Kashmir. The state registered the highest increase of 20 and 22 points in CPI-AL and CPI-RL, respectively.

On the other hand, the consumer price index numbers of Orissa registered the decrease of 4 points each mainly due to decrease in the prices of rice and vegetables.