NEW DELHI -- India's annual consumer inflation accelerated to 5.11 percent in January from 4.28 percent a month ago, after New Delhi shifted to a new base year for calculating prices, government data released today evening showed.
The country's statistics department has started using 2012 as the new base in place of 2010 for measuring retail prices. It has lowered weighting for food and fuel items in the revamped price index.
"It won't be right to compare the new series with RBI's inflation target of 6 percent based on the old series. Given the way inflation is lower under new series compared to the old series, RBI should now bring down its inflation target to 5 percent by March 2015," said Indranil Pan, Chief Economist, Kotak Mahindra Bank.
The government also announced that India's industrial output grew 1.7 percent in December. Analysts polled by Reuters were expecting output growth to come in at 1.6 percent compared with a 3.8 percent growth in November.