During the week under review, inflation based on wholesale price index (WPI) rose by 0.40 points to 8.55 per cent (provisional) from 8.15 per cent (provisional) last week. Overall WPI also spurted by 0.2 per cent.

The sharp rise in inflation was fuelled by the one percentage point increase in non-food articles and 0.8 per cent increase in food articles. The corresponding period last year saw an inflation rate of 3.53 per cent.

Prices of fruits and vegetables, milk, wheat, rice, gram, barley and arhar increased during the week. The overall index (base:1981-82=100) stood at 356.6 (P) as against 355.8 (P) for the previous week. The annual inflation based on final index calculated on a point to point basis for the reference week was 8.8 per cent as against 8.3 per cent based on provisionalindex last week.

The final wholesale price index for "all commodities" for July 25 stood at 353.2 as against the provisionally estimated 351.7 points. Inflation based on the consumer price index for industrial workers (CPI-IW) was, however, almost double that of the rate of price rise based on wholesale prices.

Inflation based on consumer prices stood at 15.04 per cent in August.