Vegetable inflation falls sharply, easing retail inflation concerns
New Delhi: After a significant dip in the headline retail inflation, India’s wholesale price index or WPI-based inflation eased to 2.31 per cent (provisional) January, 2025, mainly due to the decline in prices of food items, especially vegetables. This is marginally lower than the previous month’s WPI rate of 2.37 per cent, while it was 0.33 per cent in January 2024, the data released by the ministry of commerce and industry showed on Friday.
As per the data, inflation in food items eased to 5.88 per cent in January, as against 8.47 per cent in December 2024. “Inflation in vegetables came down significantly to 8.35 per cent, as against 28.65 per cent in December 2024. In the eggs, meat and fish category inflation declined to 3.56 per cent as against 5.43 per cent last month.” the data showed.
Besides, the data further showed that in the vegetable segment, tomato prices declined to 18.9 percent while inflation in potato continued to be high at 74.28 per cent, and in onion it spiked to 28.33 per cent in January. Besides, the fuel and power category witnessed a deflation of 2.78 per cent in January, against a deflation of 3.79 per cent in December. In manufactured items, inflation was 2.51 per cent as compared to 2.14 per cent in December 2024,” it showed
On Wednesday, core retail inflation eased to a 5-month low of 4.31 per cent in January on easing prices of food items. “We project the WPI to average at 2.4 per cent in FY2025 and inch up further to 3 per cent in FY2026, despite expectations of a cooling in the prints for the food segment,” said ICRA senior economist Rahul Agrawal.
CARE Ratings chief economist Rajani Sinha is of the view that food prices are likely to ease in the coming months driven by seasonal correction in prices. “However, there are headwinds as far as global commodity prices are concerned. Their prices have been hardening amid growing uncertainty around the impact of the US protectionist trade policies. This would exert an upward pressure on the WPI non-food component,” he said.
