July retail inflation picks up to 2.36 percent

NEW DELHI (Reuters) - India's annual consumer price inflation picked up to 2.36 percent in July after easing for three straight months, as a decline in food prices slowed sharply, government data showed on Monday.

The rise was faster than the 1.87 percent forecast by economists in a Reuters poll. Inflation was 1.54 percent in June - the slowest pace since India started releasing retail inflation data in January 2012 based on combined data for rural and urban consumers.

(Reporting by Manoj Kumar and Rajesh Kumar Singh; Editing by Douglas Busvine)