Shri Srikant Kumar Jena, Hon'ble Minister of State (Independent charge), Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation announced the release of the monthly provisional Consumer Price Index (CPI) on Base 2010=100 along with annual inflation rates for January 2012, compiled by the Central Statistics Office. All India provisional General (all groups) CPI numbers of January 2012 for rural, urban and combined are 115.0, 112.8 and 114.0 respectively.

Shri Jena said that the annual inflation rates based on population segment specific CPI such as industrial workers, agricultural labourers and rural labourers are so far available. There is a long pending demand of ministries and various users for a comprehensive consumer inflation rate. To meet this demand, annual inflation rates based on this broad based CPI series for January 2012 are released today. Provisional annual inflation rate based on all India general CPI (Combined) for January 2012 on point to point basis (January 2012 over January 2011) is 7.65%. The corresponding inflation rates for rural and urban areas are 7.38% and 8.25%.

Provisional annual inflation rates of January 2012 for rural, urban and combined in respect of ‘food and beverages’ are 4.18, 3.98 and 4.11 respectively.