Cooling food prices pull inflation down to five-month low in July

Industrial output stays robust, tops pre-Covid level

India’s headline retail inflation for July came in at its lowest in five months, helped by easing global commodity prices and lower food prices domestically. Still, at 6.71 per cent, it was above the Monetary Policy Committee’s (MPC’s) medium-term target, thus justifying the recent monetary tightening by the Reserve Bank of India (RBI).

On the industrial production front, official data showed a normalising base effect. According to the Index of Industrial Production (IIP), growth in India’s factory output came in at 12.3 per cent year-on-year (YoY) in June, against a 12-month high of 19.6 per cent in the previous month.

Barring capital