India’s food inflation accelerated to 7.74% in September, while headline consumer inflation reached 5.54%, in figures that came too early to show any effect from the Reserve Bank of India’s latest rate increase.
The Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation (MoSPI) published the provisional September figures on Oct. 12. Headline inflation was 5.54% year over year, compared with a final 4.83% in August. Food prices, measured by the Consumer Food Price Index, were up 7.74%, versus 5.97% the previous month. The release extends EconoTimes’ earlier coverage of September’s inflation rise.
Food inflation was 8.06% in rural areas and 7.18% in urban areas. Onion inflation reached 108.09% year over year, compared with 48.78% in August. Sugar inflation rose to 29.80% from 24.27%, according to MoSPI’s item-level figures.
The September data measure prices from before the Oct. 7 decision. The RBI’s Monetary Policy Committee voted unanimously that day to raise the repo rate by a quarter point, moving it from 5.25% to 5.50%. The committee also shifted the policy stance to “calibrated tightening.”
The RBI cited an inadequate southwest monsoon, El Niño conditions and high energy and other commodity prices as supply-side risks. It said monetary policy aims to keep such shocks from feeding into inflation expectations and the prices businesses set, a process that takes time.
Before the September figures were released, the RBI forecast inflation of 6.0% in October-December 2026 and 5.7% in January-March 2027. MoSPI plans to publish October’s CPI report on Nov. 12. The RBI’s next policy meeting is scheduled for Dec. 2-4.
