One economist predicts that India will be facing a third wave Covid-19-related infection, and that rising inflation will remain a major “pain point” in its economy.

India’s rising prices are a problem for more than three years, according to Charu Chanana (lead economist, Asia, Continuum Economics), an independent research company.

In the first quarter, “we actually do see inflation getting above the 6% level — which is at the upper limit of the RBI central bank,” she told CNBC’s “Squawk Box Asia” on Tuesday, referring to the Reserve Bank of India.

The omicron wave may indicate further difficulties. We’ve witnessed significant impacts on the supply chain in all previous Covid-19 waves. “And the impact on inflation is significant,” she said. This is going to be one the “most significant pain points for the economy right currently,” she said.

At the central bank latest Financial Stability ReportLast week, Shaktikanta Das, RBI Governor, stated that India’s economy is facing headwinds due to global developments, and, more recently, from the rise of the transmissible micron variant.

He stated that inflation is still a problem, as evidenced by rising cost-push forces.

It was also noted in the report that even before omicron, global growth and trade were starting to lose steamThe factors that caused it to be stalled include supply chain disruptions, bottlenecks, and other issues.

The central bank stated that these forces along with rising commodity prices have made inflationary pressures persist across all geographies and pose a grave risk to global economic prospects.

India’s Covid-19 case numbers are on the rise. several states such as Delhi and MumbaiThe omicron variant is causing an increasing number of infections.

Chanana said that India, unlike the Delta wave, is more prepared for the Omicron variant due to its rising vaccination rates.

“Vaccinations have improved significantly from where India was during the delta wave. We are looking at vaccinating 15-year-olds, plus we are looking at booster shots — that should help drive through this wave,” she added.

All the latest government dataOver a 24-hour span on Tuesday, there were 168,000 additional cases. Data showed that cumulative vaccine levels reached over 1.53 billion doses on Tuesday.

So far nearly 45% of the country’s populationAccording to Our World in Data, he was fully immunized as of January 9, 2009.

Chanana observed that India’s vaccination rates were still lower than other developed countries.

“I think one other point of concern here is that the omicron wave we’ve seen in the U.S. and U.K. – they mostly relied on mRNA vaccines to immunize their populations,” she said. India has so far relied only on its local vaccines. It remains to be determined how well they will do against this new variant.