Pulses, milk and cereal prices push inflation to 10.86 per cent

Based on the annual Wholesale Price Index, food inflation was up 10.86 per cent during the week ended 21 August as against the previous week's 10.05 per cent with pulses and milk among the items contributing to the surge.

Fuel inflation too rose 12.71 per cent on a year-on-year basis during the latest reported week, overtaking the 12.57 per cent recorded in the previous week, according to government data released on Friday.

The annual rate of inflation for Primary Articles, computed on point-to-point basis, was 15.19 per cent for the latest week as against 14.75 per cent points in the previous week.

On a sequential basis, the Primary Articles' group index stood higher by 1.4 per cent as the index for Food Articles' group gained 1.8 per cent on higher prices of fish-inland (22 per cent), fruits and vegetables (4 per cent) and gram (1 per cent) though moong and eggs (2 per cent) and masur (1 per cent) were down.

The index for 'Non-Food Articles' group increased 0.4 per cent on costlier raw silk (2 per cent) and groundnut seed, raw cotton, copra and rape and mustard seed (1 per cent each) but prices of castorseed (3 per cent), raw rubber (2 per cent) and gingelly seed (1 per cent) slid. On the other hand the index for 'Minerals' group was up 1.4 per cent due to higher fluorite prices (3 per cent) and barites and iron ore (2 per cent each).

However, steatite slipped (26 per cent) and asbestos (21 per cent) and while feldspar (4 per cent) prices were down.