New Delhi, Apr 15 (KNN) India’s wholesale price index (WPI)-based inflation jumped to 3.88% year-on-year (YoY) in March 2026 from 2.13% in the previous month, according to data released by Ministry of Commerce and Industry on Wednesday.
The rise in WPI inflation reflects the impact of the West Asia crisis which has led to a spike in energy prices.
“Positive rate of inflation in March 2026 is primarily due to increase in prices of crude petroleum & natural gas, other manufacturing, non-food articles, manufacture of basic metals and food articles etc,” an official release noted.
Wholesale inflation in primary articles which include cereals, paddy, pulses, wheat, vegetables, milk, eggs, meat and fish, oilseeds, minerals and crude oil rose to 6.36% in March 2026 as compared to 3.27% in the previous month. Primary articles together carry a weight of 22.62%.
The fuel and power inflation turned positive in March this year and rose to 1.05% from staying negative (-3.78%) in the previous month.
Manufactured products inflation stood at 3.39% in March this year as against 2.92% in the previous month. The manufactured products have the highest weightage of 64.23% in the WPI index.
Commenting on WPI numbers, Rahul Agrawal, Senior Economist, ICRA said that while the uptick was broad-based, the crude petroleum and natural gas, and the fuel and power groups witnessed sizable hardening in their YoY inflation rates, reflecting the impact of the surge in global energy prices owing to the West Asia crisis.
“While food inflation remained steady at 1.8% in March 2026, the core WPI (non-food manufactured items) hardened to a 41-month high of 3.7% from 3.3% in February 2026. On a sequential basis, the core index hardened by 0.7% in March 2026, in line with the average for the previous three months,” he said.
Agrawal noted that the crude petroleum index in the WPI rose by 49% on a MoM (month-on-month) basis in March 2026, similar to the rise in the Brent crude oil prices.
“Interestingly, there is a change in the composition of the Indian basket of crude oil in March 2026 vis-à-vis February 2026, with a larger weight assigned to Brent compared to the sour West Asian grades, which have seen larger price spikes owing to the West Asia crisis,” he highlighted.
(KNN Bureau)
