India's food price inflation shoots up to 12.13 per cent

The wholesale price-based inflation rate in the country shot up by 2.67 percentage points to 12.13 per cent during the week ended 11 December 2010 against 9.46 per cent during the previous week.

The spike in inflation has been due to an across-the-board jump in the prices of almost all essential commodities, including vegetables and fruits, fish and meat, cereals and pulses as also condiments and spices.

Food price inflation in the country stood at 21.13 per cent during the corresponding period of the previous year.

Build-up of food price inflation so far during the financial year (beginning 1 April 2010) was 13.02 per cent (provisional) against 22.11 per cent (provisional) in the similar period of the previous year.

The index for the 'food articles' group rose 2.3 per cent to 185.8 (provisional) from 181.7 (provisional) in the previous week due to higher prices of fruits and vegetables (up 6 per cent), fish-marine (up 5 per cent), fish-inland and condiments and spices (up 3 per cent each), barley (up 2 per cent) and bajra, urad, maize and rice (up 1 per cent each). However, the prices of masur (down 2 per cent) and moong and poultry chicken (down 1 per cent) declined.

With prices of onions and almost all other vegetables ruling high in the wake of crop damage due to unseasonal rains in Maharashtra and the government effecting a hike in fuel prices, analysts expect inflation to climb further, belying RBI and government predictions of a narrowing of inflation rate towards the year-end.