NEW DELHI, Feb. 12 -- THE economy faced a double whammy of high retail inflation and low industrial production.
On the one hand, the retail inflation jumped to over five-and-a-half-year high of 7.59 per cent in January on persistently high prices of vegetables, pulses and protein-rich meat and fish and on the other hand the industrial output contracted by 0.3 per cent in December, weighed by a decline in the manufacturing sector, government data showed on Wednesday.
The earlier high was in May 2014 when the CPIbased inflation was 8.33 pc.
The overall food inflation during January this year stood at 13.63 per cent, slightly lower than 14.19 per cent in the previous month, showed the data released by the National Statistical Office under t...