Research and Publications

Today, the Reserve Bank released the results of September 2025 round of its bi-monthly inflation expectations survey of households (IESH)^{1 2}. The survey was conducted during August 28 to September 06, 2025, in 19 major cities, with 6,082 responses.

Highlights:

1. Households' perception of the current median inflation inched up by 20 basis points (bps) to 7.4 per cent in comparison to the previous round. However, their inflation expectations for the next three months and one year ahead declined by 20 bps and 30 bps to 8.1 per cent and 8.7 per cent respectively [Charts 1a and 1b; Table 3].

2. For both short term and one year ahead periods, the shares of respondents anticipating rise in both general prices and inflation has come down vis-à-vis the previous survey round [Tables 1(a) and 1(b)].

3. Households reported easing of price and inflationary pressures in major product groups including food products, non-food products, housing and cost of services 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 August 06, 2025. Unit-level data for previous rounds 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’.