Retail inflation for industrial workers eases to 5.45% in April: Labour ministry data

NEW DELHI: Retail inflation for industrial workers eased to 5.45 per cent in April 2020 from 8.33 per cent in the same month a year ago, mainly due to lower prices of certain food items and petrol, official data showed. "Year-on-year inflation based on all items stood at 5.45 per cent for April 2020 as compared to 5.50 per cent for the previous month and 8.33 per cent during the corresponding month of the previous year," a Labour Ministry statement said.

Food inflation stood at 6.56 per cent in April 2020 against 6.67 per cent of the previous month (March 2020) and 4.92 per cent during the corresponding month (April 2019) a year ago, it said.

Lauding the efforts of the Labour Bureau which collects and released Consumer Price Index-Industrial Workers (CPI-IW), Labour Minister Santosh Gangwar said the 'cost of living index' data collection and release by the bureau in these difficult times during the lockdown is commendable and would go a long way to help in policy making in the country.


The CPI-IW is used to work out hike in dearness allowance and dearness relief for over 1 crore central government employees and pensioners.

The All-India CPI-IW for April 2020 increased by 3 points and stood at 329.

On 1-month percentage change, it increased by (+) 0.92 per cent between March and April 2020, compared to (+) 0.97 per cent rise between corresponding months of previous year.

The maximum upward pressure in current index came from food group contributing (+) 2.43 percentage points to the total change.

At item level, rice, wheat, wheat atta, arhar dal, moong dal, mustard oil, fish fresh, goat meat, poultry (chicken), brinjal, cabbage, cauliflower, french bean, green coriander leaves, lady's finger, palak, potato, radish, tomato, banana, lemon, mango (ripe), sugar, cooking gas, etc are responsible for the increase in index.

However, it said that this increase was checked by garlic, onion, parval, petrol, flowers/flower garlands, etc, putting downward pressure on the index.

At centre level, Doom-Dooma Tinsukia recorded the maximum increase of 14 points followed by Salem (12 points) and Surat (10 points).

On the contrary, Chhindwara, Vadodara, Bhilai, Yamunanagar and Jamshedpur recorded a decrease of 1 point each. Rest of 12 centres' indices remained stationary.

The indices of 33 centres are above all-India index and 44 centres' indices are below national average. The index of Rourkela centre remained at par with all-India index.