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LATEST NEWS UPDATES | Does the govt know how to control rising prices? by Subodh Varma

Does the govt know how to control rising prices? by Subodh Varma

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published Published on Jul 29, 2010   modified Modified on Jul 29, 2010


Does the government really have any clue about how to go about controlling prices? A quick survey of statements made by everybody from the prime minister downwards shows a picture of groping in the dark, while handing out empty assurances from time to time. What is worse, it's all smoke and mirrors for the public. Coming as it does from a government that is loaded with top-notch economists, it is bad news for the country's people.

Last November, Montek Singh Ahluwalia, deputy chairman of the Planning Commission and the pointman for economic policy, predicted that rising prices would be controlled by the end of the financial year, that is, March 2010. When he was saying this, inflation as calculated on wholesale prices was a mere 1.5%, although consumer prices were rising at a blazing 13.5% year on year.

By January, inflation rate based on the consumer price index touched a 42- month high of 16% and then settled at 15% in February. Maybe this prompted the prime minister to say that the worst was over. But wholesale prices increased by a whopping 10% in February, entering double-digit territory for the first time.

In the run-up to the Union Budget, there was a flurry of activity on the price front. Finance minister Pranab Mukherjee said prices would moderate in two months. Agriculture minister Sharad Pawar added his bit by saying that food prices had started falling. The prime minister set up a core group of ministers and chief ministers from 10 states to come up with a strategy for bringing prices down.

Come March 2010, the sarkari inflation rate had jumped to 11% while consumer prices were rocketing to nearly 15%. Remember, this was when prices were supposed to moderate, according to Ahluwalia.

What did the core group do? It set up three working groups to look into various aspects of price rise, like how to increase production of food, how to tackle storage and distribution problems and so on. Meanwhile, the Opposition sponsored a countrywide bandh on April 27, protesting against price rise.

Since May this year, the prime minister has been stoically maintaining that inflation will go down by December this year, while the finance minister is saying it will get under control after the monsoon, that is somewhere around September.

Economic bureaucrats, not to be left behind, are also busy churning out deadlines for inflation. Chief statistician TCA Anant predicts November, the PM's economic advisory council goes with November too while chief economic adviser Kaushik Basu says August.

Meanwhile, Reserve Bank of India, sticking to its theory that inflation can be controlled by regulating the supply of money in the economy, has upped the central banks' lending and borrowing rates four times in the space of five months, including twice in July itself.

But the raging price rise continues. The WPI-based inflation rate is 11% in July, the sixth month running in double digits while the CPI-based rate has been in double-digit territory for 11 months till May this year, which is the last month for which data has been released.

Will there be some relief for ruined family budgets in the coming days? By the government's reckoning, it can happen anytime in the next six months, as it could have in the past six.


The Times of India, 29 July, 2010, http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/Does-the-govt-know-how-to-control-rising-prices/articleshow/6230111.cms
 

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