Retail inflation rises to 2.57 per cent in February from 2.05 per cent last month on the back of modest rises in food and fuel prices.
India's factory growth dragged while retail inflation saw an uptick in the data released on Tuesday. Retail inflation rose to a three-month high of 2.57 per cent in February from 2.05 per cent last month on the back of modest spike in food and fuel prices.
Industrial production slipped to 1.7 per cent in January 2019 from 2.4 per cent in December 2018, manufacturing index was at 1.3 per cent per cent v/s 2.7 per cent month-on-month.
Eleven out of the twenty three industry groups in the manufacturing sector have shown positive growth during the month of January 2019.
A Reuters poll of 37 economists had predicted consumer price inflation to have picked up to 2.43 percent from January's 2.05 percent.
This is the seventh straight month where inflation has remained below the RBI's medium term target of 4 per cent.
In its sixth bi-monthly monetary policy meeting held on February 7, the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) announced a change in its policy stance to 'neutral' from 'calibrated tightening', lowering the repo rate by 25 basis points from 6.5 per cent to 6.25 per cent.
The Reserve Bank of India, in its sixth bimonthly policy review, revised downwards the path of inflation to 2.8 per cent in the fourth quarter of 2018-19, 3.2-3.4 per cent in first-half of 2019-20 and 3.9 per cent in the third quarter of 2019-20, with risks broadly balanced around the central trajectory.
It also projected the inflation outlook to remain soft in the near term while flagging certain risks which merit "careful monitoring" beyond near term. These include reversal in vegetable prices, uncertainty in trade tensions and geopolitics which could impact commodity prices among others.