Falling for the fourth straight month, retail inflation declined to 5.52 per cent in October, from 6.46 per cent in September, helped by softening prices of food items. This is the lowest since the new series of data was introduced in January 2012.

According official data released yesterday, overall food inflation based on the Consumer Price Index fell to 5.59 per cent in October, from 7.67 per cent in September. Retail prices of vegetables declined by 1.45 per cent. Inflation in protein rich items like eggs, fish and meat eased to 6.34 per cent during the month.

Meanwhile, Industrial production grew at a three-month high of 2.5 per cent in September, mainly on account of better mining and manufacturing output and larger off take of capital goods. The factory output, as measured by the Index of Industrial Production, IIP, grew at 2.7 per cent in the same month last year. The data released by the Central Statistics Office yesterday said that for August, it was revised to 0.48 per cent from the provisional estimates of 0.42 per cent released last month.

The industrial production expansion was 4.3 per cent in June and 0.4 per cent in July this year.