CRISIL MI&A Research said prices of representative home-cooked vegetarian and non-vegetarian thalis increased by 6 percent and 4 percent, respectively, on a month-on-month basis in June 2024.
It said the cost of a vegetarian thali has increased month-on-month mainly due to increase in prices of vegetables, with prices of potatoes, onions and tomatoes increasing by 9 percent, 15 percent and 29 percent respectively due to inferior arrivals. The price of non-veg thali also increased due to higher prices of vegetables, but an estimated one per cent monthly increase in the cost of broilers, which is 50 percent of the cost of non-veg thali, prevented further increase.
Crisil MI&A Research said that on a year-on-year basis, the price of home-cooked vegetarian thali increased by 10 per cent in June, while the price of non-veg thali declined by 4 percent. The cost of the vegetarian thali increased due to increase in tomato, onion and potato (TOP) prices by 30 percent, 46 percent and 59 percent respectively year-on-year, mainly due to the low base of the earlier financial year.
Crisil said low arrivals of onion due to significant decline in Rabi acreage, decline in potato crop yield due to unseasonal rains in March and high temperatures in the major growing regions of Karnataka and Andhra have contributed to the virus outbreak in the summer tomato crop. Onion prices increased due to infection. In the state where the arrival of tomatoes decreased by 35 percent year on year.
Crisil said that for non-veg thali, the decrease in costs was due to an approximate turn down of 14 percent year-on-year in broiler prices from the high base of the previous financial year as well as oversupply conditions and lower feed costs.
A vegetarian thali consists of roti, vegetables (onion, tomato and potato), rice, dal, curd and salad. For the non-veg thali, the ingredients remain the same but for the dal, which is replaced with chicken.
India’s retail increase rate, measured by the Consumer Price Index (CPI), stood at 4.75 percent in May 2024, up from 4.83 percent in April 2024. The Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) of RBI kept the repo rate at 6.50 percent.
