Food Inflation at 14.85%: Dangerous Past Revisions

Food Inflation – the “Primary Articles” part of the WPI – is quietly inching downwards, at 14.85%.

Click for larger images.

While inflation looks like it’s moderating, what’s really happening is that past data is being revised constantly, and these revisions have thrown the inflation numbers earlier.

The most recent revision is for that of 12th June (2 months earlier) which has pushed up the Inflation figure then to a whopping 19.79%, from an earlier reported 17.60%.

I’ve spoken about the dangerous revisions earlier:

A major concern now is how this data is being corrected. Usually after two weeks a preliminary figure is quoted, and that is corrected after two months. The last weeks have seen tremendous upward corrections. For the week ended May 1, primary articles (food) inflation was announced as 16.44%, but it has now been corrected to 18.64%. (Get Data Here)

Here’s how it goes.

I don’t have access to data before 18/5 right now (the press releases are not archived), so can’t chart prior revisions.

Related posts:

1. Inflation Still High – 16.08% on food, 18% Fuel India’s inflation – just primary articles – is at 16.08%....
2. Monthly WPI Inflation at 10.55%, April revised to 11.23% Wholesale price inflation – the detailed monthly data – shows...
3. Inflation data delayed – Why are we surprised? ET says "Inflation data delayed, no reasons given". How surprising...
4. Inflation at 12.01% Congratulations. We have now officially crossed 12% in reported inflation...
5. Inflation (WPI) at 10.16% Inflation for May 2008 came to 10.16%. Unfortunately, the March...

This entry was posted on Friday, August 20th, 2010 at 7:39 AM and is filed under Inflation. You can subscribe to any comments to this entry via RSS 2.0. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.