Zeenews Bureau
New Delhi, July 09: Inflation continued its downward spiral for the fourth consecutive week with the latest figures released on Thursday putting it at -1.55% for the week ended 27th June.
The official Wholesale Price Index for `All Commodities` for the week ended 27th June 2009 rose by 0.04 percent to 234.7 (Provisional) from 234.6 (Provisional) for the previous week. Infaltion was – 1.30% in the previous week.
The decline, however, came despite a rise in food prices. During the week, fish-marine, arhar and fruits, vegetables, urad and moong prices rose. However, the prices of eggs (10%), tea (3%), bajra (2%) and maize and masur (1% each) declined.
There was an upward movement in the prices of raw wool, raw rubber, groundnut seed and raw cotton. However, the prices of niger seed (19%), sunflower (3%), copra (2%) and raw silk and rape & mustard seed (1% each) declined.
A decline was witnessed in coconut oil and oil cakes and groundnut oil. However, the prices of butter, rice bran oil and imported edible oil (1% each) moved up.
Despite the recent trends in inflationary figures, the government has been asserting that inflation would not remain in the negative territory for long and would rise to about 2 to 4 percent by the end of the current fiscal.
The inflation had hit a high of 13 percent in August following spike in prices of petroleum products in the international market, has been on the decline since the outbreak of the global financial crisis in mid-September last year.
The inflation rate, after a gap of almost three decades, turned negative for the week ended June 6 and was likely to remain in that territory for some more time.
Besides decline in prices of manufactured goods, the base effect is also responsible for negative growth in the WPI index. The base effect is likely to continue for some more time as the inflation last year peaked in August.
However, the impact of the recent increase in price of petrol and diesel will have a bearing on the inflation rate in coming weeks as the government had increased the price of petrol and diesel by Rs 4 and Rs 2 respectively on July 1.
