Your costs rose 9.92% this year. Your prices rose 4.82%. That gap is your margin
Both numbers landed on Monday. Wholesale inflation is running at nearly twice retail — the widest that gap has been in this cycle, and it sits entirely on the producer.
Two numbers came out on Mondayand most coverage took one of them. Retail inflation — CPI — rose to 4.82% in August from 4.45% in July, its tenth straight month of acceleration and the highest reading since December 2024. Food inflation went to 5.95%, rural inflation to 5.23% against urban at 4.31%. That is the number the rate debate runs on, and on its own it looks manageable.
The other number is the one on your purchase register. Wholesale inflation — WPI — was 9.92% in August, up from 9.78% in July, with the all-commodities index at 110.8. Fuel and energy carried it. Read the two together and the arithmetic is unforgiving: the prices at which you buy are rising at close to 10%, the prices at which the economy lets you sell are rising at 4.82%, and the roughly five-point difference is not absorbed by anyone downstream. It is absorbed by the person who converts inputs into output — the manufacturer, the job worker, the processor. Goods transport inflation alone ran above 14% in August. If your quotations are older than a quarter and your input mix is fuel-heavy, you are already selling at a margin you last calculated under different prices.