Retail Inflation Rises By 2.86% In March

India's retail inflation or CPI (Consumer Price Index) based inflation stood at 2.86 percent in March, higher than previous month's 2.57 percent, according to data released by Central Statistics Office (CSO), Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation on Friday.

The above percentage is a combined figure of the CPI in rural as well as urban India. CPI measures the changes in shop-end prices. Despite the increase in fuel and food prices, retail inflation remained comfortably within RBI's target level of 4 percent.

For the month under review, rural CPI was seen at 1.80 percent and urban CPI was at 4.10 percent, pointing out to a wide difference.

Further, the CSO notified of the revision of the Base Year of the Consumer Price Index (CPI) from 2010=100 to 2012=100 with effect from the release of indices for the month of January 2015.

Price data are collected from selected towns and selected villages all over India by the Field Operations Division of NSSO (National Sample Survey Office). Price data are received through web portals, maintained by the National Informatics Centre.

The next date of release is 13th May 2019 for data related to April 2019.