Costly food articles accelerates inflation to 4.45%

New Delhi, Aug 3 (UNI) Costly food articles and manufactured products pushed inflation to 4.45 per cent for the week ended July 28 from 4.36 per cent in the previous week.

Inflation has increased despite RBI's continued insistance that it has pushed up the CRR and interest rates to check it. The Central Bank in its quarterly review of the monetary policy raised mandatory cash deposits of banks by 0.5 per cent to suck out Rs 16,000 crore out of the banking system.

The annual inflation rate was 4.72 per cent during the corresponding week last year, an official statement said here today.

Inflation at 4.45 per cent is within RBI's expectation of five per cent for this fiscal and even its projection of 4-4.5 per cent in the medium term.

The Wholesale Price Index (WPI) for all commodities for the week ended July 28, 2007 rose by 0.1 per cent to 213.4 from 213.1 for the previous week.

The index for Primary Food Articles rose by 0.3 per cent to 223.4 from 222.8 for the previous week.

The index for the Food Articles group rose by 0.5 per cent to 221.8 (Provisional) from 220.7 for the previous week due to higher prices of eggs ( two per cent), mutton (four per cent), and fruits and vegetables, masur and bajra (one per cent).

However, the prices of gram (one per cent) declined.

The index for Non-Food Articles group declined by 0.2 per cent to 209.7 (Provisional) from 210.1 (Provisional) for the previous week due to lower prices of sunflower (seven per cent), skins (raw) and groundnut seed (two per cent each) and raw cotton ( one per cent).

However, the prices of raw rubber( 15 per cent) soyabean (two per cent) and castor seed and rape and mustard seed (one per cent each) moved up.

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