It is likely that retail inflation based on the consumer price index (CPI) has closed fiscal year 2024-25 between 3.8 percent and 4 percent in March. The official data will be published on Tuesday.
Vegetable prices have shown a mixed trend, while gold prices remain continuous. This suggests that food inflation is expected to remain flat, but nucleus inflation (main inflation that excludes food and fuel) can witness an increase.
Even so, the inflation of the holders is expected to be around 4 percent, the median of the target inflation range or from 2 to 6 percent. This provides comfort to the monetary policy committee, since it reviews the policy interest rate, commonly known as the repo rate (the rate at which the Bank of the India Reserve lends to the programmed commercial banks), especially after two successive cuts.
The year -on -year inflation rate (interannual) based on the consumer price index (CPI) of all India by February 2025, compared to February 2024, was 3.61 percent. This marked a decrease or 65 basic points in the main inflation since January 2025, which makes it the lowest year -on -year inflation rate such as July 2024.
Similarly, food inflation for February 2025 stood at 3.75 percent compared to February 2024. A strong decrease or 222 basic points was observed in food inflation between January and February 2025. The Food Inflation figure of February 2025 was the lowest since then.
DK Srivastava, main policy advisor to Ey India, hopes that this trend will continue in March. “The average of January and February was 3.9 percent, and for the quarter (January-March), it will be less than 4 percent,” he said.
A Crisil report highlights a divergent trend in the duration of prices prices (tomato, onion and potato). Tomato prices decreased 34 percent of 21/kg in March 2025, below ₹ 32/kg in March 2024. This fall was driven by a 29 percent increase in tomato arrivals throughout the country, partly in southern Southern Stassa Sawe -Shala Sawe -Sawe -Savase -Sevasa, it improved to the levels of health reserve.
In contrast, potato and onion prices increased by 2 percent and 6 percent, respectively. Meanwhile, the general prices of vegetables increased by 19 percent. These trends are expected to affect both food inflation numbers and to lead.
Aditi Nayar, chief economist of ICRA, believes that the sequential increase in plant inflation in March 2025, which will probably prevent greater softening in the printing of food and drink inflation during the month, the fourth observed around the quarter. “This would increase the impression of IPC inflation slightly to 3.9-4 percent for the month. In general, IPC inflation is now expected to average 3.9 percent in the fourth quarter of fiscal year 201025, well below the MPC projection of 4.4 percent for the quarter,” he said.
An HDFC Bank research report also expects inflation to be about 3.8-4 percent in March, with the average fourth quarter of 4 percent. For the fiscal year26, “we estimate the average inflation to 4.2 percent. A beginning of summer and heat wave predictions for certain regions have an upward risk for food inflation,” the report said.
Posted on April 14, 2025