By Pranoy Krishna
BENGALURU (Reuters) - The fading impact of high base effects likely pushed India's consumer inflation higher in August, ending a nine-month streak of declines, according to a Reuters poll of economists.
Base effects, which kept headline inflation at multi-year lows in recent months, probably faded in August and coincided with an acceleration in food price rises, which account for nearly half of the consumer price basket.
Consumer inflation, as measured by the annual change in the Consumer Price
Index (CPI), rose to 2.10% in August from 1.55% in July, the median forecast in a September 4-9 poll of over 40 economists showed.
Estimates in the survey ranged from 1.35% to 3.00%.
The expected outcome would mark the seventh month in a row inflation stayed below the Reserve Bank of India's (RBI) 4.0% medium-term target. August CPI data is due to be released on Friday at 1030 GMT.
"As base effects started to fade in August, food prices have also started to pick up ... That is driving inflation higher," said Kanika Pasricha, chief economic advisor at Union Bank of India.
"Vegetable inflation on a year-on-year basis is likely to continue to stay in a negative zone because even though there is a sequential pickup, it is still lagging seasonal trends."
Inflation was expected to average 3.0% this fiscal year, broadly in line with the RBI's 3.1% forecast, a separate Reuters poll taken last month showed.
Core inflation, which excludes volatile food and fuel components and better reflects underlying demand, was expected to have grown to 4.20%, broadly in line with July.
That was partly driven by a rally in gold prices, which rose around 5% in August on safe-haven demand away from U.S. dollar assets. The Indian statistics office does not publish official core inflation data.
Wholesale price inflation was projected to have climbed to 0.30% in August from minus 0.58% in July, the poll showed.
(Reporting by Pranoy Krishna; Polling by Devayani Sathyan, Vijayalakshmi Srinivasan, and Susobhan Sarkar; Editing by Sonali Paul)
