March inflation rises to 6.89% year on year, dips vs Feb

New Delhi: India's wholesale price index (WPI) rose a faster-than-expected 6.89 percent in March from a year earlier, mainly driven by higher food prices, government data showed on Monday.

While the wholesale prices this in March dipped marginally from the 6.95 percent rate in February, analysts had on average had expected a year on year rise of 6.70 percent, a Reuters poll showed.

[caption id="attachment_276916" align="alignleft" width="380" caption="Food inflation rose to 9.94 percent from 6.07 percent in February. Reuters"][/caption]

The annual reading for January was revised up to 6.89 percent from 6.55 percent, the government said in the release.

Food inflation, which has a weightage of about 14 percent in the WPI calculations, rose to 9.94 percent from 6.07 percent in February, while non-food manufacturing inflation (or core inflation) declined to 4.87 percent from 5.7 percent in the previous month.

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Fuel inflation dipped slightly to 10.41 percent compared to 12.83 percent in February.

With inputs from Reuters