New Delhi: India’s agricultural and rural workers saw a further easing of inflation in September, according to data released by the Ministry of Labour and Employment on Saturday.
The year-on-year inflation rate for agricultural labourers stood at -0.07 per cent, while rural labourers recorded 0.31 per cent. The All-India Consumer Price Index (CPI) for agricultural labourers fell by 0.11 points to 136.23, and for rural labourers, it declined by 0.18 points to 136.42.
The Food Index also recorded a drop, falling 0.47 points for agricultural labourers and 0.58 points for rural labourers in September.
The Labour Bureau released the CPI numbers for agricultural and rural labourers with the base year 2019=100. The indices are compiled from data collected from 787 sample villages across 34 states and union territories.
The revised series includes methodological improvements to make the indices more robust. These include updates to weighting diagrams reflecting changes in consumption patterns, use of the Geometric Mean (GM) instead of the Arithmetic Mean (AM) to reduce volatility, and adoption of the latest classification of individual consumption according to purpose (COICOP-2018).
Meanwhile, India’s annual inflation rate based on the Wholesale Price Index (WPI) eased to 0.13 per cent in September from 0.52 per cent in August, according to the Ministry of Commerce and Industry.
The country’s consumer price index (CPI)-based inflation dropped to 1.54 per cent in September, an over eight-year low, driven by lower prices of food items and fuels compared with the same month last year.