Air passenger service prices surge 31.9% in Q1 FY27: Govt data

New Delhi: Service prices showed a mixed trend in the first quarter of FY27, with airline, railway, insurance and telecom services seeing price increases, while securities transaction and banking services recorded declines, according to provisional data released by the ministry of commerce and industry on Monday.

The sharpest increase among the services tracked under the Service Producer Price Index (PPI) was in air passenger service prices, which rose 31.9% year-on-year (y-o-y) in the June quarter.

The Service PPI was introduced in June as part of the government's new Producer Price Index framework, with 2022-23 as the base year. It aims to measure price movements at the producer or service-provider level. The index covers seven sectors, including banking, securities transactions, insurance, railways and telecom. The government has not assigned weights to these sectors as they do not represent the entire services sector. The increase in air passenger service prices for the earlier quarters has not been computed because FY26 has been used as the price reference period for compiling the index. The Banking Service Contribution Index rose 6.9% y-o-y in the June quarter, up from 3.3% in the last quarter of FY26.


However, the Banking Service Price Index declined 3.5% compared with a 4.1% contraction in the earlier quarter. During the quarter, the Management of Pension Funds Service Price Index increased 5.2% y-o-y. In the previous quarter, it had shown a contraction of 0.8%.

The Insurance Service Price Index rose 1% y-o-y compared with around 0.7% in the last quarter of FY26. Within the railways sector, passenger service prices rose 3.5% in the first quarter of FY27, unchanged from the previous quarter, while freight service prices increased 0.1% compared with no change in the last quarter of FY26.

The Railway Service Price Index showed a 1.3% increase, up slightly from 1.2% in the previous quarter. Meanwhile, telecom service price inflation eased to 0.7% in the June quarter from 1% in Q4 of FY26. The Securities Transaction Service Price Index fell 1.3% in Q1 OF FY27, reversing a 0.6% increase recorded in the previous quarter.