New Delhi: Inflation rose to a 24-week high of 6.16 per cent for the week ended July 3. The surge was mainly on account of the aviation turbine fuel (ATF) turning costlier, along with a rise in the prices of manufactured items.

Reacting to the rising inflationary trend, the government said it plans to watch how the inflation rate behaves over the next two to three weeks. "We have to watch the situation for the next two to three weeks," the chief economic adviser to the finance ministry, Ashok Lahiri, told newspersons after the wholesale price index data was released yesterday.

The point-to-point inflation, according the data released by the industry ministry, was up 0.07 per cent from 6.09 per cent during the previous week, even as prices of food articles fell mainly due to cheaper fruits and vegetables. According to the data, the food articles group index plummeted by over one per cent to 183.4 points due to lower prices of vegetables and fruits (six per cent), tea (three per cent) and bajra (one per cent).

Prices rose for barley (three per cent), fish-inland, and condiments and spices (two per cent each) and fish-marine, moong, urad and masur (one per cent each).

The index for non-food articles'' group was up 0.5 per cent to 192.6 points due to costlier castor seed (three per cent), safflower and groundnut seed (two per cent each) and fodder, raw rubber, raw tobacco and rape and mustard seed (one per cent each), even as gingelly seed became cheaper by one per cent.

Fuel, power, light and lubricants'' group index declined by 0.1 per cent to 274.9 points due to one per cent dip in the price of naphtha and furnace oil, even as the ATF became costlier by a whopping 11 per cent. The index was 249.3 points during the previous year.

The index of heavy-weigthted manufactured products'' group was up by 0.1 per cent to 164 points due to costlier food products, beverages, tobacco, textiles, chemicals, basic metals and transport equipment; it was 154.1 points a year ago.

The food products group index rose 0.2 per cent to 173.5 per cent due to higher prices of oil cakes and khandsari (two per cent each), rice bran oil, rawa, coconut oil and atta (one per cent each).

But prices of bran (five per cent) and imported edible oil (one per cent) fell. A 17 per cent spurt in prices of rectified spirit pushed beverages, tobacco and tobacco products group index up 0.8 per cent to 210.9 points.

A three per cent dip in prices of cotton yarn-hanks pushed the textiles group index down 0.4 per cent to 135.4 points, even as texturised yarn became costlier by two per cent and cotton yarn cones by one per cent.

A 16 per cent rise in benzene price moved the chemicals and chemical products group index up 0.2 per cent to 178.8 points while purified terephthalic acid became cheaper by one per cent. A marginal one per cent fall in cement prices pushed the non-metallic mineral products group index down 0.3 per cent to 153.3 points. The index for basic metals alloys and metal products'' group rose 0.1 per cent to 202.6 points owing to higher prices of bright bars (20 per cent) and ferro silicon (three per cent), even as zinc became cheaper by two per cent. The transport equipment and parts'' group index was up 0.1 per cent to 150.3 points due to higher prices of trekker (seven per cent), jeeps (nine per cent) and bicycles (one per cent).