India, May 14 -- The Wholesale Price Index (WPI) grew by 8.3% in April. This number was 2.3% in February and 3.9% in March. The sequential increase between March and April is 4.4 percentage points, the highest monthly increase ever recorded in the current series, which has data from April 2012. Almost all of the WPI increase is due to fuel prices. If we exclude the primary commodity sub-component of crude oil and natural gas, and the fuel sub-component of mineral oils, the WPI prints for February, March, and April would be 3.1%, 3.1%, and 4.2%, respectively.

The WPI trend is in sharp contrast to retail inflation, as measured by the Consumer Price Index (CPI). The latter has been flat in February, March, and April, with respective values ...