All-India consumer price index for August up by 3 points

New Delhi, Sep 26 (UNI) The All-India Consumer Price Index for Urban Non-Manual Employees (CPI-UNWE) for August 2006 rose to 484 points, up three points over the index for July 2006.

The rise was attributed to the 'Food, Beverages and Tobacco' group, which was higher by 0.85 per cent followed by the "Miscellaneous" group (0.61 per cent) over the previous month, figures released by the Central Statistical Organisation (CSO), Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation, revealed.

The index for August 2006 showed a rise of 6.1 per cent over the year.

Chennai was at the top among the four metro cities with 563 indices, followed by Delhi with 502 indices, Mumbai with 474 indices and Kolkata with 437 indices.

While Kolkata and Siliguri showed a downward decrease by a point each, at the other end, Ranchi recorded the largest increase, according to the figures of 59 selected urban centres in the country for August.

The variation in the index for various centres ranged from 1.9 to 11.6 per cent, though the increase was less than 4.0 per cent for 5 centres. In ten centres, it ranged from 4.0 to 5.0 per cent, 5.1 to 7.0 per cent in 26 centres and 7.1 per cent and above in 18 centres.

Two centres registered annual percentage increase equal to that of all-India and 27 centres recorded higher percentage increase as compard to the all-India average.

UNI SD CS BD1929