Weekly Numerics | Surge in food prices propel retail inflation, desktops gain ground, & air pollution funds languish

Weekly Numerics is a column that features three to five charts based on major events or interesting data points that emerged during the week. Here are some of the key figures of the past seven days.

Retail inflation at three-month high

India’s retail inflation, which is based on the Consumer Price Index (CPI), saw the highest uptick of the last three months in November, at 5.55 percent. The rise was on the back of an increase in the price of food and beverages during the month. In fact, no other major categories recorded a rise in inflation in November.

Food inflation rose to 8.7 percent in November from 6.61 percent a month ago. Together, inflation in food and beverages stood at 8.02 percent in November. Food inflation during the month was mainly driven by a rise in the price of vegetables, fruits, sugar, and pulses.

The fuel and light category, meanwhile, recorded a higher deflation of -0.77 percent during the month, from -0.33 percent a month ago. Excluding food, fuel and light, the core index inflation remained low, at 4.11 percent in November, close to the government’s target inflation of 4 percent.

Also Read: Vegetables, base effect propel retail inflation to 5.55% in November

“Based on commodity prices provided by the Department of Consumer Affairs (DCA), prices of tur dal, urad dal, rice, wheat, milk, and sugar will remain elevated in December. Prices of onions and tomatoes have begun to moderate. Thus, we can expect inflation in December to observe a slight downward shift compared to November,” said a report by the Centre for Monitoring Indian Economy (CMIE).

Funds for fighting air pollution remain underutilised

Even though residents of Indian cities struggle to breathe due to air pollution, funds transferred to states for the reduction of air pollution in ‘non-attainment’ cities remain largely underutilised, according to data shared by the Ministry of Environment, Forest, and Climate Change in the Lok Sabha.

Nearly 62 percent of funds transferred to the 82 non-attainment cities (NAC) across India under the National Clean Air Programme (NCAP) remain underutilised. Cities are declared non-attainment if over a five-year period, they consistently do not meet the National Ambient Air Quality Standards (NAAQS) for PM10 particles. The 82 NAC that have been given the target of reducing PM10 levels by around 3-15 percent annually include cities like Delhi, Noida, and Chandigarh.

From FY19-20 till date, Nagaland has only utilised Rs 1.62 crore of the total Rs 13.7 crore released to the state under the scheme. This means that as much as 88.18 percent of the funds remain underutilised. States like Rajasthan, Punjab, Karnataka, and Delhi have also seen a majority of the funds being underutilised, as evident from the chart above.

Share of Indians using desktops to get online is rising

Cloudflare, the largest content delivery network (CDN) provider in the world, released its `Year in Review, 2023’ report this week. While the report had several insights on how the internet has evolved over the past year, when it comes to India, one of the interesting aspects is the rising share of desktops in India’s internet traffic.

India has seen a surge in internet usage in recent years due to the availability of cheap mobile internet data packs. As such, mobile internet users dominate the country’s internet traffic.

However, the latest data from Cloudflare shows that the share of desktops in India’s internet traffic has gone up from 20 percent at the end of December 2022 to more than 36 percent as of December 11, 2023. Corresponding to the rise of desktops, the share of mobile devices has dipped from nearly 80 percent to around 64 percent during the same period.

According to a report released by the International Data Corporation in November, India’s PC market grew 14 percent year-on-year (YoY) during the July-September quarter of 2023. This growth was largely driven by the consumer segment, which grew more than 26 percent YoY. Demand from the education sector grew nearly 118 percent on year.

Steady increase in toll collection through FASTag

The user fee collected by toll plazas has seen steady growth since the nationwide introduction of FASTag in FY16-17, according to data from the Ministry of Road, Transport and Highways presented in the Lok Sabha. The total amount collected through toll plazas increased from nearly Rs 34,000 crore to more than Rs 48,000 crore between FY21-22 and FY22-23.

In FY23-24, the total amount collected till November 2023 has already crossed the FY22 total. FASTag, the electronic toll collection system under the National Highways Authority of India, has seen a gradual growth in adoption since its inception. According to official data, as much as 98.9 percent of toll charges on National Highways are collected through FASTags.