May retail inflation up after April fall

India's retail inflation inched up to 5.01 percent in May after having fallen to 4.8 percent in April, official data showed on Friday.

The retail, or the consumer price indexed (CPI) inflation, in the corresponding month of 2014 was at 8.33 percent, the Central Statistics Office here said.

The CPI-urban for May stood at 4.41 percent and rural at 5.52 percent.

May's food inflation stood at 4.8 percent from the previous month's rate of 5.11 percent.

In this connection, the Reserve Bank of India, last week, reduced its repo rate, that is the rate at which it lends to commercial banks, from 7.5 percent to 7.25 percent.

Giving reasons for the monetary policy stance, RBI Governor Raghuram Rajan said plans for lower food output needed to be in place, global financial markets were volatile, factory output was recovering unevenly, services sector was emitting mixed signals,

fuel inflation was up, exports were down and liquidity had improved.

In the calendar year thus far, the central bank has twice cut the repo rate over two unscheduled monetary policy reviews - in January and March - bringing it down to 7.5 percent. But during the scheduled reviews in February and April, no changes were effected.