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A labourer carries a sack filled with cabbage to load it onto a supply van at a vegetable wholesale market in Chennai (Reuters)
Inflation in India is expected to have edged up on
higher food costs in March, snapping a three-month easing trend that
will give the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) less scope to support the
economy amid fresh signs of slowdown.
Analysts say the risk of less-than-normal monsoon rains this summer will call into question assumptions that the worst is over for Asia's third-largest economy.
Wholesale prices probably rose 5.30 percent last month, faster than a 4.68 percent rise in February, according to the median forecast of a Reuters poll. Consumer inflation is expected to have quickened to 8.19 percent in March from 8.10 percent a month ago, the poll showed.
The government will release the data on wholesale prices on Tuesday around 0630 GMT. Consumer price data is due at 1200 GMT.
India has been battling a prolonged spell of high inflation and low growth. While economic growth has almost halved to below 5 percent for the past two years, the worst slowdown for the South Asian nation since the 1980s, retail inflation has been averaging around 10 percent.
A sharper-than-expected cooling in vegetable prices in the past three months had raised hopes of breaking out of that spell. But recent unseasonal hail and heavy rains in parts of the country have damaged crops and driven up food prices again.
"India's economic backdrop is still fragile," said Bill Adams, senior international economist at PNC Financial Services Group.
A continuing slump in investment and consumer demand resulted in a surprise 1.9 percent annual contraction in industrial output in February, which compared with analysts' median forecast of 0.9 percent growth. Exports fell for a second straight month in March, widening the trade deficit to a five-month high.
EL NINO THREAT
Compounding growth worries is an uncertain outlook for summer monsoon rains due to a possible El Nino weather event that affects wind patterns and can trigger both floods and drought.
Australia's Bureau of Meteorology last week predicted that the chance of an El Nino weather event developing in 2014 now exceeded 70 percent.
A strong El Nino in India would trigger lower production of summer crops such as rice, sugarcane and oilseeds. In 2009, it had turned monsoon rains patchy, leading to the
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pgdm sem 2
sou- yahoo
Higher food costs probably pushed inflation up in March
A labourer carries a sack filled with cabbage to load it onto a supply van at a vegetable wholesale market in Chennai (Reuters)
SummaryIndia has been battling a prolonged spell of high inflation and low growth.
Analysts say the risk of less-than-normal monsoon rains this summer will call into question assumptions that the worst is over for Asia's third-largest economy.
Wholesale prices probably rose 5.30 percent last month, faster than a 4.68 percent rise in February, according to the median forecast of a Reuters poll. Consumer inflation is expected to have quickened to 8.19 percent in March from 8.10 percent a month ago, the poll showed.
The government will release the data on wholesale prices on Tuesday around 0630 GMT. Consumer price data is due at 1200 GMT.
India has been battling a prolonged spell of high inflation and low growth. While economic growth has almost halved to below 5 percent for the past two years, the worst slowdown for the South Asian nation since the 1980s, retail inflation has been averaging around 10 percent.
A sharper-than-expected cooling in vegetable prices in the past three months had raised hopes of breaking out of that spell. But recent unseasonal hail and heavy rains in parts of the country have damaged crops and driven up food prices again.
"India's economic backdrop is still fragile," said Bill Adams, senior international economist at PNC Financial Services Group.
A continuing slump in investment and consumer demand resulted in a surprise 1.9 percent annual contraction in industrial output in February, which compared with analysts' median forecast of 0.9 percent growth. Exports fell for a second straight month in March, widening the trade deficit to a five-month high.
EL NINO THREAT
Compounding growth worries is an uncertain outlook for summer monsoon rains due to a possible El Nino weather event that affects wind patterns and can trigger both floods and drought.
Australia's Bureau of Meteorology last week predicted that the chance of an El Nino weather event developing in 2014 now exceeded 70 percent.
A strong El Nino in India would trigger lower production of summer crops such as rice, sugarcane and oilseeds. In 2009, it had turned monsoon rains patchy, leading to the
vijay kr yadav
pgdm sem 2
sou- yahoo
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