A Reuters poll had estimated a fall of 0.2 per cent. The month-over-month change in WPI for the month of April 2023 over March 2023 remained at 0.0 per cent.
April is the 11th straight month when wholesale price index (WPI) based inflation has declined.
The decline in the rate of inflation was broad based, primarily driven by fall in prices of crude, energy prices, non-food and food articles, the government said in the statement.
Primary articles inflation slowed to 1.60 per cent in April from 2.40 per cent in March.
Fuel & power inflation reduced to 0.93 per cent in April from 8.96 per cent in March and 13.96 per cent in February.
Inflation in manufactured products declined to -2.42 per cent in April from -0.77 per cent in March and 1.94 per cent in February.
The WPI had come down to a 29-month low of 1.34 per cent in March on easing prices of manufactured products and fuel items, even though food articles turned expensive.
Retail inflation in India eased sharply in April to 4.7 per cent or an 18-month low, as against 5.7 per cent the previous month.
“This is an optimistic number and may impact the future policy trajectory of RBI,” SBI Research’s ‘Ecowrap’ report said.
“Item-wise analysis reveals that weighted contribution of food and beverages declined by a maximum by 41 bps in Apr’23 mainly on account of wheat/atta (other sources). Fruits inflation, too, decelerated significantly with the weighted contribution of mango declining by 11 bps in Apr’23.”
The Reserve Bank of India, in its first monetary policy review meeting this fiscal in April, decided to keep the key benchmark interest rate — the repo rate (the rate at which the RBI lends to other banks) — unchanged at 6.5 per cent, to assess the effects of the policy rate tightening done so far.
India’s retail inflation was above RBI’s 6 per cent target for three consecutive quarters and had managed to fall back to the RBI’s comfort zone only in November 2022. Under the flexible inflation targeting framework, the RBI is deemed to have failed in managing price rises if the CPI-based inflation is outside the 2-6 per cent range for three quarters in a row.