New Delhi, March 16
Wholesale price inflation rose for the fourth straight month, at 2.13 per cent in February, driven by an uptick in prices of food and non-food articles, even though vegetable prices eased on a month-on-month basis, government data showed on Monday.
Wholesale Price Index (WPI)-based inflation was 1.81 per cent in the previous month and 2.45 per cent in February last year.
“Positive rate of inflation in February 2026 is primarily due to an increase in prices of other manufacturing, manufacture of basic metals, non-food articles, food articles and textiles, etc.,” the industry ministry said in a statement.
According to WPI data, inflation in food articles was 2.19 per cent in February, as against 1.55 per cent in the previous month.
In vegetables, inflation eased to 4.73 per cent in February against 6.78 per cent in January.
However, pulses, potato and egg, meat and fish saw an uptick in inflation in February over the previous month.
In the case of manufactured products, WPI inflation inched up to 2.92 per cent in February, from 2.86 per cent in the preceding month.
Non-food articles category inflation spiked to 8.80 per cent in February, from 7.58 per cent in January.
Negative inflation, or deflation, continued in the fuel and power basket, at 3.78 per cent in February, vis-a-vis 4.01 per cent in January.
The country’s retail inflation rose to 3.2 per cent in February, from 2.75 per cent in January, data released last week showed.
The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has reduced policy interest rates by 1.25 percentage points in the current fiscal year as inflation remained low.
The RBI mainly tracks retail inflation for deciding on benchmark interest rates.
PTI
