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All-India CPI inflation for July 2026 was 4.45% provisional, with rural at 4.84% and urban at 3.96%.
Consumer Food Price Index inflation was 5.52%, higher than headline inflation, with rural food inflation at 5.79%.
Silver jewellery recorded the steepest price rise at 109.84%, followed by ginger at 83.62% and garlic at 35.36%.
Potato prices fell 16.56% year-on-year, the largest decline among key items.
Separately, MoSPI reported that manufacturing GVA grew at a compound annual rate of 10.88% between 2022-23 and 2025-26 under the revised 2022-23 base national accounts series.
Two separate base revisions are in play in these releases, and confusing them is a common error. The CPI has moved to base year 2024 = 100, with its item basket and weights drawn from the Household Consumption Expenditure Survey 2023-24. A base revision does three things at once: it resets the index level to 100 in the base year, it updates which items are in the basket — new categories such as streaming services enter, obsolete ones leave — and it re-weights each item according to current household spending patterns. That last part matters most for the inflation number, because inflation is a weighted average: if households now spend a smaller share on cereals and a larger share on services, the same price movements produce a different headline figure. Separately, MoSPI has revised the base year of the National Accounts Statistics from 2011-12 to 2022-23, with the revised series released in February 2026. That governs GDP and Gross Value Added, not prices. GVA measures output net of intermediate consumption at basic prices, while GDP at market prices adds product taxes and subtracts subsidies — which is why sectoral shares such as manufacturing's 14.8% are always quoted as a share of GVA rather than of GDP.
Simple Analogy: Rebasing an index is like resetting a bathroom scale and also changing what clothes you weigh yourself in: the reading changes even if your body has not, so old and new readings should not be compared directly.
Compiles and releases the Consumer Price Index and the National Accounts Statistics; revised the CPI base to 2024 and the national accounts base to 2022-23
The statistical arm of MoSPI; its Field Operations Division collects real-time price data weekly from 1,407 urban markets and 1,465 villages
The six-member committee constituted under Section 45ZB of the Reserve Bank of India Act, 1934, which sets the policy repo rate to meet the inflation target measured by headline CPI
MoSPI's data platform from which State-level and item-level CPI indices can be downloaded; the release cautions that some State item indices rest on thin price-quotation samples
| Aspect | Consumer Price Index | Wholesale Price Index | Gross Value Added |
|---|---|---|---|
| What it measures | Retail prices paid by households | Prices of goods traded in bulk at the wholesale level | Value of output net of intermediate consumption, at basic prices |
| Compiled by | National Statistical Office, MoSPI | Office of the Economic Adviser, Department for Promotion of Industry and Internal Trade | National Statistical Office, MoSPI |
| Base year now in use | 2024 = 100 | Separate series maintained by DPIIT | 2022-23, revised from 2011-12 and released in February 2026 |
| Covers services? | Yes — housing, health, education, transport, communication, restaurants | No — goods only | Yes, across all sectors |
| Policy use | The anchor for the RBI's inflation target under the flexible inflation targeting framework | Input cost and producer price monitoring | Sectoral composition of the economy, such as manufacturing at 14.8% of GVA in 2025-26 |
The Monetary Policy Committee, constituted under Section 45ZB of the RBI Act, 1934, targets headline CPI inflation at 4% within a tolerance band of plus or minus 2 percentage points; a July print of 4.45% sits close to the centre of that band
Rural inflation exceeding urban inflation — 4.84% against 3.96% — reflects the higher weight of food in rural consumption baskets, a standard explanation in questions on inflation incidence
The 2023-24 HCES supplied the item basket and weights for the CPI 2024 series, linking consumption survey design directly to the inflation number
Silver jewellery at 109.84% shows how a global commodity price surge transmits into a domestic retail index through the personal care and miscellaneous division
Manufacturing's share of GVA has stayed near 14.5-14.8% despite a 10.88% CAGR in manufacturing GVA, which is the empirical core of the debate about whether India's manufacturing share is actually rising
The reply lists PLI schemes, PM GatiShakti, the National Logistics Policy, Bharat Audyogik Vikas Yojana (BHAVYA), semiconductor and electronics initiatives, critical minerals, surface coal and lignite gasification, and the National Industrial Corridor Development Programme as the current manufacturing toolkit
GS Paper 3 > Economy > Inflation, Price Indices and National Income Accounting
General Awareness > Monetary Policy, Inflation Measurement and RBI Framework
General Awareness > Indian Economy > Price Indices
Indian Government Bond Yields are influenced by which of the following? 1. Actions of the United States Federal Reserve 2. Actions of the Reserve Bank of India 3. Inflation and short-term interest rates Select the correct answer using the code given below.
Answer: 1, 2 and 3
With reference to the Indian economy, consider the following statements: 1. If the inflation is too high, Reserve Bank of India (RBI) is likely to buy government securities. 2. If the rupee is rapidly depreciating, RBI is likely to sell dollars in the market. 3. If interest rates in the USA or European Union were to fall, that is likely to induce RBI to buy dollars. Which of the statements given above are correct?
Answer: 2 and 3 only
CPI, WPI and the inflation targeting framework are near-certain topics in banking exams and recur regularly in UPSC Prelims economy
The food sub-index of the CPI, compiled by the NSO; it stood at 5.52% inflation in July 2026 against headline CPI of 4.45%
The reference year set equal to 100 for an index; CPI now uses 2024 = 100 and the National Accounts Statistics use 2022-23
Output net of intermediate consumption measured at basic prices; GDP at market prices equals GVA plus product taxes minus subsidies
Headline inflation excluding food and fuel, used to see through the volatility that items like tomato and onion introduce
Successive stages of national accounts data — 2024-25 figures are FRE and 2025-26 figures are PE in this release
The six-member body constituted under Section 45ZB of the RBI Act, 1934 that sets the policy rate to meet the CPI inflation target