The Ministry of Statistics & Programme Implementation released the Consumer Price Index data for August 2026 with base year 2024=100, showing a significant increase in retail inflation. The year-on-year inflation rate based on All India CPI reached 4.82% (provisional) in August 2026, up from 4.45% in July 2026. The inflation pattern showed divergence between rural and urban areas, with rural inflation at 5.23% and urban inflation at 4.31%.
Food inflation based on Consumer Food Price Index increased to 5.95% in August 2026 from 5.52% in July, with rural food inflation at 6.13% and urban food inflation at 5.64%. The data reveals significant variations across product categories, with the top five items showing high inflation including silver jewellery (107.11%), ginger (73.82%), onion (48.27%), garlic (43.60%), and gold/diamond/platinum jewellery (35.53%). Conversely, the top five items with low inflation included tomatoes (-31.09%), potatoes (-13.14%), motor car and jeep (-6.72%), lady's finger (-5.41%), and parwal/patal and kundru (-3.60%).
The detailed division-wise analysis shows that personal care, social protection and miscellaneous goods and services had the highest inflation at 15.17%, followed by restaurants and accommodation services at 8.38%. At the group level, other personal effects showed extremely high inflation at 44.56%, while transport services for goods recorded 14.64% inflation. The purchase of vehicles category showed deflation of -4.38%.
State-level data indicates that among states with more than 50 lakh population, Telangana recorded the highest combined inflation at 6.27%, followed by Tamil Nadu at 5.92%, while Mizoram had the lowest at 2.35%. The data collection methodology achieved 100% response rate in both rural and urban markets during August 2026, covering 1407 urban markets (including online markets) and 1465 villages across all States/UTs. The next CPI release for September 2026 is scheduled for October 12, 2026, with detailed state and item-wise indices available on the eSankhyiki portal of MoSPI.