In March 2025, National Statistics Office (NSO) under the Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation (MoSPI) released the Consumer Price Index (CPI) for rural, urban and combined for the month of February 2025. As per the official data, Year-on-year inflation rate based on All India Consumer Price Index (CPI) for the month of February, 2025 over February, 2024 is 3.61% down from 4.26% in the preceding month.
- This decline is driven by a sharp decrease of 222 basis points in food inflation, from 5.97% (in January 2025) compared to 3.75% (February 2025), marking the lowest level since May 2023 (3.19%).
- The data further revealed that Industrial Index Production (IIP) witnessed the growth of 5.0% in January 2025, compared to 3.2% observed in December 2024.
- Food Inflation: Year-on-year inflation rate based on All India Consumer Food Price Index (CFPI) for the month of February, 2025 over February, 2024 is 3.75% (Provisional).
Key Findings related to Inflation:
i.Rural Inflation: Rural sector of the country saw significant decrease in both headline inflation and food inflation in February 2025.
- The headline inflation decreased from 4.59% (in January 2025) to 3.79% (Provisional).
- While, the rural CFPI-based food inflation declined from 6.31% (in January 2025) to 4.06% (in February 2025).
ii.Urban Inflation: Just like rural inflation, the headline inflation of urban sector has significantly decreased from 3.87% (in January 2025) to 3.32% (Provisional) in February 2025.
- Similarly, food inflation dropped from 5.53% to 3.20% for the same period of time as for headline inflation.
iii.Combined inflation rate for both rural and urban sector for other key domains: fuel & light (-1.33%); education (3.83%); health (4.12%); transport and communication (2.87%).
iv.Items with highest & lowest inflation rate (February 2025): Coconut oil (54.48%) & Ginger (-35.81%) respectively.
v.Top 5 States/UTs with highest inflation rate: Kerala topped among all Indian states or Union Territories (UT) with high Year-on-Year (Y-o-Y) inflation rate of 7.31% for the month of February 2025, followed by UT Chandigarh (4.89%), Karnataka (4.49%), Bihar (4.47%) and UT Jammu & Kashmir (J&K) (4.28%).
About Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementaion (MoSPI):
Minister of State (MoS) (Independent Charge, IC)-Rao Inderjit Singh (Constituency- Gurugram, Haryana)
