Costlier milk, meat push retail inflation to 9.47 Percent

New Delhi: Spurt in prices of milk and its products, vegetables, meat, edible oil and fuel pushed the retail inflation to 9.47 percent in March, suggesting deterioration in the price situation. Retail inflation, based on the Consumer Price Index (CPI), was 8.83 percent in February, as per the government data released here today. According to the data, milk and its products prices went up by 15.22 percent in March as compared to the price level in the same month a year ago. Similarly, the price of edible oil rose by 14.2 percent. Fuel price increased by 11.8 percent while clothing bedding and footwear rates rose by 12.50 percent in the month under review as compared to year ago period. Prices of egg, fish and meat shot up 10.06 percent, while vegetables became costlier by 10.20 percent. Worried over rising food prices, Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee had said yesterday that high level of inflation would persist for time being and there was no escape from it. RBI Governor D Subbarao, which reduced the benchmark rates by 0.5 percent yesterday to boost growth, had termed inflation as necessary evil. The inflation based on Wholesale Price Index (WPI) has, however, eased to 6.89 percent in March as compared to 9.68 percent in the same month a year ago. It was 6.95 per cent in February. According to the CPI data, retail inflation for rural and urban areas were 8.79 percent and 10.30 percent respectively in March this year, suggesting that prices rose faster in cities than in villages. The All-India CPI is in addition to the three retail price indices -- for agricultural labourers, rural labourers and industrial workers --prepared by the Ministry of Labour.