Data recap: Inflation, IPO revival, millets in diet

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Plain Facts publishes a compilation of data-based insights, complete with easy-to-read charts, to help you delve deeper into the stories reported by Mint in the week gone by. Retail inflation unexpectedly surpassed the 7%-mark in July due to high vegetable prices, Samsung will receive the highest payout under the government’s production-linked incentive (PLI) scheme for mobile manufacturing, and Russia surpassed Iraq as India’s largest supplier of crude oil. Retail inflation in India hit a 15-month high of 7.4% in July on account of a sharp rise in vegetable prices.

If not for vegetable prices, retail inflation would have been 5.4%, implying that vegetables alone dragged up the headline figure by 200 basis points in July, a Mint analysis showed. While economists expect vegetable prices to ease over the next two months, they predict another 7%-plus print in August, posing a dilemma for the Reserve Bank of India that has held policy rates steady since April. India is doing worse than China on population control measures, according to 40% of urban Indians polled in the latest round of the YouGov-Mint-CPR Millennial Survey.

Half said India needs either a strict step like China’s one-child policy or some measures such as penalties or restrictions on voting rights. On certain other key measures, the verdict was in India’s favour on governance, economic growth, adoption of technology, and support to start-ups. But China was seen as doing better on employment and poverty reduction.