India’s February wholesale inflation rises to 2.38%, food prices up 5.94%

Wholesale price inflation marginally rose to 2.38 per cent in February due to expensive manufactured food items like vegetables oil and beverages, government data released on Monday showed.

The Wholesale Price Index (WPI) based inflation was 2.31 per cent in January. It was 0.2 per cent in February 2024.

The marginal increase in WPI was witnessed after three consecutive months of decline. The month-over-month change in WPI for the month of February stood at 0.06 per cent as compared to January.

Positive rate of inflation in February, 2025 is primarily due to the increase in prices of manufacture of food products, food articles, other manufacturing, non-food articles and manufacture of textiles, etc, according to the statement issued by the Ministry of Commerce & Industry.

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As per the data, inflation in manufactured food products rose to 11.06 per cent, vegetable oil rose by 33.59 per cent, while beverages increased marginally to 1.66 per cent during the month.

Overall, the manufactured products index increased by 0.42 per cent in February.

However, prices of vegetables cooled with potato prices dropping to 27.54 per cent from 74.28 per cent during the month. Besides, prices of milk moderated at 1.58 per cent from 5.40 per cent in the previous month.

Fruits and onion prices were still ruling high with 20 per cent and 48.05 per cent inflation respectively.

The fuel and power category witnessed a deflation of 0.71 per cent in February, against a deflation of 2.78 per cent in the previous month.

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Retail inflation data released on Wednesday showed that Consumer Price Index (CPI) based inflation eased to a 7-month low of 3.61 per cent in February on easing prices of food items.

According to ICRA Senior Economist Rahul Agrawal, the downward pressure on the headline print on account of the dip in food inflation was offset by the narrowing deflation in the fuel and power segment, and an uptick in the core (non-food manufacturing) WPI inflation to a 24-month high of 1.3 per cent.

Looking ahead, he said, while healthy crop output and an elevated base is expected to lead to further cooling in the WPI-food inflation in the near term, higher-than-normal temperatures pose an upside risk to the food inflation trajectory.

Overall, ICRA expects the WPI inflation to average at 2.5-3 per cent in the financial year 2025-26, he added.