India’s Inflation Soars to a 17-Month High on War Impact
- Retail prices rose 6.95% in March versus 6.4% survey estimate
- RBI prioritized inflation over growth in the latest policy
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India’s headline inflation rose to a 17-month high, vindicating the central bank’s pivot toward fighting risks to price stability from the war in Ukraine and raising the prospect of an increase in policy rates.
Consumer prices rose 6.95% in March from a year earlier, the Statistics Ministry said in a statement Tuesday. That’s faster than the 6.1% rise in February, and compares with a 6.40% gain predicted in a Bloomberg survey of economists. It stood at 7.61% in October 2020.