Inflation At 2-Year High In October, Breaches RBI's Upper Limit

Retail inflation rose sharply to 6.09 per cent in October on costlier food items, breaching the RBI's upper tolerance limit of 6 per cent for the first time since October 2024.

The consumer price index (CPI) based headline retail inflation was 5.54 per cent in September.

Food inflation spiked to 8.94 per cent in October 2026 from 7.74 per cent in the previous month, according to the data released by the Ministry of Statistics & Programme Implementation.

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The top five items with high inflation were onion (116.22 per cent), garlic (60.74 per cent), silver jewellery (52.39 per cent), ginger (48.32 per cent) and lemon (47.30 per cent).

This is the first time in two years that retail inflation has breached the RBI's upper tolerance band of 6 per cent. The central bank is mandated to keep inflation within the range of 2-6 per cent. In October 2024, retail inflation was 6.25 per cent.

The October retail inflation is a key data point before the December 2-4 meeting of the RBI monetary policy committee.

The RBI had in October hiked the benchmark policy rate by 0.25 per cent to 5.50 per cent -- its first hike in nearly four years, while signalling that further rate hikes could follow amid rising inflation, a weak rupee and high crude oil prices.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)