Retail inflation for industrial workers rises marginally to 5.24% in May

Retail inflation for industrial workers rose marginally to 5.24 per cent in May 2021 from 5.14 per cent in April mainly due to increase in prices of certain food items and petroleum products, as well as higher mobile phone charges.

"Year-on-year inflation for the month (of May) stood at 5.24 per cent compared to 5.14 per cent for the previous month (April 2021) and 5.10 per cent during the corresponding month (May 2020) a year before," a labour ministry statement said.

Similarly, it stated that food inflation stood at 5.26 per cent last month against 4.78 per cent in April 2021 and 5.88 per cent in the corresponding month a year ago.

The Labour Bureau, an attached office of the Ministry of Labour & Employment, has been compiling the Consumer Price Index for Industrial Workers (CPI-IW) every month on the basis of retail prices collected from 317 markets spread over 88 industrially important centres in the country.

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The index is compiled for 88 centres and All-India and is released on the last working day of the succeeding month. The All-India CPI-IW for May 2021 increased by 0.5 point and stood at 120.6 points. It was 120.1 points in April this year.

On one-month percentage change, it increased by 0.42 per cent with respect to the previous month compared to an increase of 0.30 per cent recorded between corresponding month a year ago.

The maximum upward pressure in the current index came from the Food & Beverages group contributing 0.35 percentage points to the total change.

At item level, rice, arhar dal, masur dal, fish fresh, goat meat, eggs-hen, edible oil, apple, banana, jamun, papaya, potato, tomato, brinjal, cabbage, french bean, garlic, onion, sugar white, tea-leaf, cooking gas, kerosene oil, mobile telephone charges, petrol, etc are responsible for the rise in index.

However, this increase was mostly checked by leechi, mango, water melon, bitter gourd, lady’s finger, lemon, parwal, torai, tamarind, etc putting downward pressure on the index.

At centre level, Coonoor recorded a maximum increase of 4.1 points followed by Udham Singh Nagar with 3.6 points. Among others, 4 centres observed an increase between 2 to 2.9 points, 18 centres between 1 to 1.9 points and 41 centres between 0.1 to 0.9 points.

On the contrary, Bhilwara recorded a maximum decrease of 1.2 points followed by Amritsar with 1 point. Among others, 17 centres observed a decline between 0.1 to 0.9 points. Rest of four centres remained stationary.

The CPI-IW is the single-most important price statistics which has financial implications.

The CPI-IW is primarily used to regulate the dearness allowance of government employees and workers in industrial sectors. It is also used in fixation and revision of minimum wages in scheduled employments besides measuring the inflation in retail prices.