For the week ended June 7, inflation rate climbed up to 11.05 percent, as against 8.75% during the last week.

The inflation rate is currently at the highest since May 6, 1995, when it was 11.11 percent.

Fueled by rising commodity prices, this will be the 17th straight week that inflation rate has been soaring above 5.5 percent, RBI’s target by the end of the fiscal year in March 2009.

On June 4, the government had increased fuel prices by around 10 percent, and the central bank last week increased its key lending rate for the first time in more than a year to control inflation.

“Inflation is high. RBI must take steps and it has taken,” the Union Finance Minister, P. Chidambaram, had said previously.

According to the provisional figure for the week ended August 28, 2004, the previous high for the inflation rate in the UPA regime was 8.33 percent.

During the same week of the last year, the annual inflation rate stood at 4.28 percent.