Chandigarh, March 24: Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee today said inflation may spread to non-food items over a period, although food prices have started coming down.
“Though the food prices have started coming down, the concerted pressure of headline inflation arising from high food prices entails the risk of getting transmitted over time to other non-food items,” Mukherjee said at the inaugural ceremony of Exim bank branch here.
Meanwhile, chief economic adviser Kaushik Basu said in Mumbai that inflation has slowly spread to non-food items from food items. He said, however, that it would begin to decline now and would be quite lower from May-end.
“Inflation has picked up little bit on non-food sectors, which was not the case earlier… We expect to see it going downward from March and (it will be) very low by end-May or June,” he said.
–Agencies