Food price inflation in June relaxed to a nine-month low at 7.87% as temporary supply constraints due to the nation-wide lockdown relaxed while headline retail inflation at 6.09% issued after a break of two months came higher than the pre-coronavirus print of 5.84% for March.
National Statistical Office (CSO) updated food inflation for May descending to 9.2% from 9.7% estimated earlier. Rural food inflation in June at 8.41% stays way above urban food inflation at 6.92%.
Given the movement constraints and announcement of nation-wide lockdown by the government to contain the spread of coronavirus pandemic, the price collection of CPI through personal visits by price collectors was dissolved in April and May.
In a technical note published along with the retail inflation data, CSO said it included wide-ranging consultation with multilateral associations like International Monetary Fund and several countries on how they are handling and directing the data flow challenges on account of the pandemic.
Using imputation method, by which missing data is collected, CSO calculated retail inflation for April (9.9%) and May (8.9%) but cautioned that these should be used only for maintaining continuity in the CPI series.