Zeenews Bureau
New Delhi: After dropping to a 30-year low, the annual rate of inflation recovered slightly to -1.53 percent for the week ended August 8, according to official data released on Thursday.
It was stood at -1.74 percent for the previous week, ended August 01, and 12.82 percent during the corresponding week of the previous year.
This is for the 10th week that inflation is in negative zone despite a continuous rise in prices since then.
In the corresponding week also food prices moved up.
Food items like bajra, urad, condiments & spices, arhar and fruits & vegetables witnessed a rise in prices. However, the prices of jowar (4%), barley (2%) and moong (1%) declined.
Manufactured products, which carries a weightage of 63.75 percent in the overall inflation data, was a major contributor to the rise in inflation.
Major consumed itmes like ghee, edible oil, sooji witnessed a rise in prices.
The inflation rate had last turned negative in 1977. Negative inflation implies that the average wholesale price level was lower during a given week, than it was in the corresponding week a year ago.
Inflation, it may be mentioned, peaked in August 2008 to about 13 percent mainly on account of rising prices of crude oil and other commodities in the international market.
In a bid to provide better and more relevant picture of the inflation, the government is now planning to bring the base year to 2004-05 to cover more commodities in the index.
Recently the Prime Minister Manmohan Singh also acknowledged that the drought situation could push up inflation – a theory which was also admitted by the Food and Agricultural Minister Sharad Power.
Pawar yesterday said that almost half of India is drought affected which could result in less “production of rice by 10 million tonnes. Some shortfall in production of oilseeds and sugarcane is also expected,"
First Published: Thursday, August 20, 2009, 12:41