The concerns around food inflation remain given the prediction of an intense summer over the next 2-3 months
FinTech BizNews Service
Mumbai, April 15, 2024: Suman Chowdhury, Chief Economist & Head of Research, Acuité Ratings & Research, shares his views on the latest CPI data.
“CPI inflation for Mar'24 dipped marginally to 4.85% vis-à-vis 5.09% at Feb'24, in line with our expectations. Further, the print for the fourth quarter of the last fiscal stood at 5.01%, a moderate reduction from the 5.37% in the third quarter. This is despite the sticky food and beverage inflation which averaged 7.7% in both the previous two quarters.
While the sequential inflation has been quite benign for food and beverages at 0.2% MoM in Mar'24, the concerns around food inflation remain given the prediction of an intense summer over the next 2-3 months. On an annualized basis, cereal inflation remains high at 8.4% along with a significant increase in egg, fish, and meat category to 6.7% in March. With reduced availability of animal feed in the summer months, there can be a further rise in the latter category.
Nevertheless, the comfort emerges from the Core CPI inflation (excluding all food and fuel components) which declined further from 3.5% in Feb'24 to 3.4% in Mar'24. We expect RBI to maintain the status quo on the monetary policy till August 2024.”
