Retail inflation rose to 5.59 per cent in December, a six-month high, mainly due to an uptick in food prices, government data showed on Wednesday, January 12. The Consumer Price Index (CPI) based retail inflation was 4.91 per cent in November 2021 and 4.59 per cent in December 2020. As per the data released by the National Statistical Office (NSO), food inflation rose to 4.05 per cent in December this fiscal compared to 1.87 per cent in the preceding month.

The Reserve Bank, which mainly factors in the retail inflation while arriving at its bi-monthly monetary policy, expects the inflation print to be somewhat higher over the rest of the year as base effects turn adverse. According to the RBI, it is expected that headline inflation will peak in the fourth quarter of the current fiscal and soften thereafter.

Meanwhile, India's industrial production rose 1.4 per cent in November 2021, according to official data released on Wednesday. 

As per the Index of Industrial Production (IIP) data by the National Statistical Office (NSO), the manufacturing sector's output grew 0.9 per cent in November last year.

In November 2021, the mining output climbed five per cent, and power generation increased 2.1 per cent. The IIP had contracted by 1.6 per cent in November 2020.

During April-November this fiscal, the IIP grew 17.4 per cent against a 15.3 per cent contraction in the same period last year.

Industrial production has been hit due to the coronavirus pandemic since March 2020, when it had contracted 18.7 per cent.

It shrank 57.3 per cent in April 2020 due to a decline in economic activities in the wake of the lockdown imposed to curb the spread of coronavirus infections.