Today, the Reserve Bank released the results of January 2026 round of its bi-monthly Inflation Expectations Survey of Households (IESH)^{1 2}. The survey was conducted during January 2-11, 2026, in 19 major cities, with 6,079 responses.

Highlights:

1. The current median inflation perception of households inched up by 30 basis points (bps) to 6.9 per cent as compared to the previous round. Additionally, their inflation expectations for the three months and one year ahead rose by 30 bps and 60 bps, to 7.9 per cent and 8.6 per cent, respectively [Charts 1a and 1b; Table 3].

2. For both the short-term and one-year ahead periods, the shares of respondents anticipating a rise in general prices and inflation increased, reversing their declining trend [Tables 1(a) and 1(b)].

3. Households reported expectations of price and inflationary pressures across all the product groups for both the time horizons [Tables 1(a) and 1(b)].

Note: Please see the excel file for time series data³

¹ The survey is conducted at bi-monthly intervals by the Reserve Bank; it provides directional information on near-term inflationary pressures as expected by respondents and may reflect their own consumption patterns. Hence, survey results reflect respondents’ views, which are not necessarily shared by the Reserve Bank.

² All estimates of inflation expectations are given in terms of median, unless stated otherwise.

³ Results of the previous survey round were released on the Bank’s website on December 05, 2025. Unit-level data for previous rou1nds of the survey are available on the Bank’s ‘Database on Indian Economy’ (DBIE) portal (weblink: https://data.rbi.org.in/DBIE/#/dbie/home) under the head ‘Unit-level Data’.