Wholesale Price Inflation Climbs To 1.81% In Jan, Up For Third Consecutive Month

New Delhi, Feb 16 (KNN) India’s wholesale price inflation increased for the third consecutive month to 1.81 per cent in January, driven by higher prices of food items, non-food articles and manufactured goods, according to data released by the government on Monday.

Wholesale Price Index (WPI)-based inflation stood at 0.83 per cent in December 2025 and 2.51 per cent in January last year.

The government emphasised that the positive inflation rate in January was mainly due to rising prices of basic metals, other manufactured products, non-food articles, food articles and textiles.

Food and Manufacturing Prices Rise

Food article inflation turned positive at 1.55 per cent in January, compared with a deflation of 0.43 per cent in December.

Vegetable prices registered inflation of 6.78 per cent, reversing a contraction of 3.50 per cent in the previous month.

Inflation in manufactured products increased to 2.86 per cent from 1.82 per cent, while non-food articles inflation rose sharply to 7.58 per cent from 2.95 per cent.

However, the fuel and power segment remained in deflation at 4.01 per cent, compared with 2.31 per cent in December.

Retail Inflation and Monetary Policy

Retail inflation, measured by the Consumer Price Index (CPI) and monitored by the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) for monetary policy decisions, rose to 2.75 per cent in January.

The central bank has reduced policy rates by 1.25 percentage points during the current fiscal year amid low inflation and earlier this month kept the key policy rate unchanged at 5.25 per cent.

(KNN Bureau)