Inflation falls further
New Delhi: The wholesale price index-based inflation fell to 5.27 per cent for the week ended May 12, 2007, from 5.44 per cent a week ago despite the fact that prices of major commodity groups including primary articles like food continued to increase.

Another set of data released by the Central Statistical Organisation the consumer price index-based inflation for urban non-manual employees (CPI-UNME) for April rose to 7.7 per cent from 7.6 per cent a month ago.

Since the data captured price movements in consumer items over a month, the numbers show that the retail prices of food, beverages, tobacco among others continued to remain strong.

The WPI rose by 30 basis points to 211.4 for the week ended May 12, 2007. However, during the same week last year, the WPI increased by 60 basis points, thus creating a higher base effect which brought down the WPI inflation.

Under the WPI, primary articles for the week ended May 12 rose by 0.5 per cent due to higher prices of food articles like eggs (5 per cent), fruits and vegetables (2 per cent), and milk and jowar (1 per cent). The price index for manufactured products increased by 0.1 per cent.

Though prices of manufactured food products declined (0.6 per cent), most other major indices under this category including rubber and plastic products (0.6 per cent), basic metals alloys and metal products (0.9 per cent), machinery and machine tools (0.2 per cent), transport equipment and parts (0.1 per cent) increased during the week. Prices of fuel, power, light and lubricants remained unchanged.
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Govt to set up homologation center at Rs62 cr investment
New Delhi: The government has sent a notification fro setting up of an automobile testing and homologation centre, International Centre for Automotive Technology (iCAT), at an investment of Rs62 crore.

The centre would act as an accredited agency to approve homologation standards for automobiles under the central motor vehicle rules, an official release said.

iCAT would be set up under the National Automotive Testing and R&D Infrastructure project (NATRIP), and would come up in an area of eight acre at Manesar near here, the release said.

iCAT would be completed by 2010 and an additional amount of Rs400 crore would be invested at the centre to develop testing tracks and other infrastructure facilities on additional land of 42 acres.

Once it is completed the centre would meet testing requirements for a range of automobiles including two and three-wheelers, cars, MUVs and SUVs, all types of commercial vehicles and entire range of off-road vehicles.
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