CPI inflation at 15.65% in Nov, over 3 times higher than WPI

SHIMLA: Consumer price inflation of commodities consumed by agricultural and rural labourers increased to 15.65 percent in November, over three times the inflation based wholesale prices for the same month.

Wholesale price inflation stood at 4.78 percent in November. The consumer price index for agricultural labourer (CPI-AL) and rural labourers (CPI-RL) were 13.73 percent and 13.51 percent in October.

The divergence between wholesale price inflation and retail inflation is due to higher weightage of food prices in consumer price indices. It reflects faster rise in the prices of food items.

Food inflation stood at 19.95 percent for the first week of December.

Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee had earlier said that there is a tendency for wholesale price index and consumer price indices to converge after some months, but this time it is not happening.

Mukherjee said the rise was more evident in the Consumer Price Index (CPI) than in the WPI as "food items have higher weight in CPI, whether it is for industrial workers or it is for the rural labour".

Food articles have a weight of about 43-48 percent in the CPI, the minister added, pointing out the difference in the two indices.