Wholesale Inflation Turns Positive in December, Prints at 0.83%

New Delhi, Jan 14 (KNN) India’s wholesale price index (WPI)-based inflation turned positive in December 2025, rising to 0.83% year-on-year from (-) 0.32% in the previous month.

"Positive rate of inflation in December, 2025 is primarily due to increase in prices of other manufacturing, minerals, manufacture of machinery and equipment, manufacture of food products and textiles etc," Ministry of Commerce and Industry said in a release on Wednesday.

As per the official data, month over month change in WPI for the month of December, 2025 stood at 0.71% as compared to November, 2025. 

Food articles inflation remained in the negative zone during December 2025 and stood at (-) 0.43%. Vegetable inflation was at a negative 3.50% during the month under review.

Prices of manufactured products showed an upward trend. Manufactured products inflation stood at 1.83% in December 2025 as against 1.33% in the previous month.

Fuel and power inflation stayed in the deflationary zone in December last year. Prices of fuel and power declined 2.31% year-on-year during this period as compared to a contraction of 2.27% in the previous month.

Commenting on the latest WPI inflation number, Rahul Agrawal, Senior Economist, ICRA said that as a result of the uptick last month, the gap between the retail and the WPI inflation has narrowed to just 50 basis points (bps) in December 2025 from 100 bps in November 2025.

"Looking ahead, ICRA expects the WPI-food inflation to harden further in January 2026 and continue on an upward trajectory thereafter owing to an unfavourable base. Besides, global commodity prices have continued to rise on a sequential basis in January 2026 led by sharp gains in precious metals, as well as some hardening in prices of some industrial metals, even though oil prices have cooled," he said.

Unlike consumer price index (CPI)-based inflation which is based on prices paid by consumers for buying goods and services, WPI inflation tracks prices of goods at wholesale level.

The WPI inflation rate captures the average movement of wholesale prices of goods and is primarily used as a GDP deflator.

(KNN Bureau)