Wholesale price inflation extended upward momentum for the third straight month, at 1.81% in January, driven by an uptick in prices of food, non-food articles, and manufactured items on a month-on-month basis, government data showed on Monday (February 16, 2026).

Wholesale Price Index (WPI)-based inflation was 2.51% in January last year, while in the previous month (December 2025), it was 0.83%.

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“Positive rate of inflation in January 2026 is primarily due to increase in prices of manufacture of basic metals, other manufacturing, non-food articles, food articles, and textiles, etc,” the Industry Ministry said in a statement.

According to WPI data, inflation in food articles was 1.55% in January as against deflation of 0.43% in December.

In vegetables, inflation was 6.78% in January as against deflation of 3.50% in December.

In the case of manufactured products, WPI inflation inched up to 2.86%, as against 1.82% in December.

Non-food articles category inflation spiked to 7.58% in January, against 2.95% in December.

Negative inflation, or deflation, continued in the fuel and power sectors, at 4.01% in January, as against 2.31% in December.

The country’s retail inflation inched up to 2.75% in January, data released last week showed.

The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has reduced policy interest rates by 1.25 percentage points in the current fiscal year as inflation remained low.

The RBI mainly tracks retail inflation for deciding on benchmark interest rates. Earlier this month, the RBI retained key policy interest rates at 5.25%.