Food inflation will come down to single digit: Mukherjee

New Delhi, Feb 17 (PTI) Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjeetoday expressed optimism of food inflation coming down tosingle digit as the rate of price rise of essential kitchenitems moderated significantly in the first week of February.

"...in quite some time food inflation will also be undersingle digit," Mukherjee told reporters here.

Driven by high vegetable prices, the food inflation is indouble digit for the past two months and even crossed 18 percent in the last week of December 25.

"Now it is going down and I think WPI (wholesale priceindex) has also come down by 2 percentage point. So it is goodsign...," Mukherjee added.

The food inflation for the week ended February 5 toucheda nine week low at 11.05 per cent from 13.07 per cent in theprevious week.

However, Mukherjee cautioned that weekly and monthlyfluctuations in inflation numbers "are always deceptive".

He, further said that despite seasonal fluctuations ininflation figures, the overall inflation ending March 2011would be in the range of 7 per cent.

"I hope as I mentioned earlier, by March we able to reachoverall inflation of 7 per cent," he said.

The headline inflation measured on WPI has alsomoderated to 8.23 per cent in January from 8.43 per cent inthe previous month.