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LATEST NEWS UPDATES | Government-led inflation

Government-led inflation

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published Published on Mar 16, 2010   modified Modified on Mar 16, 2010

Food inflation remains extraordinarily high at 17.79%. The government emphasises supply problems caused by last year’s drought, But a bigger and less reversible problem is government-led inflation through big increases in the Minimum Support Prices (MSP). The MSP for wheat and paddy rose only modestly between 2002-03 and 2005-06 , from Rs 620 to Rs 650/ quintal and from Rs 530 to Rs 570/quintal respecticely.

But after that the MSP shot up to touch Rs 1,100 for wheat and Rs 950 for paddy in 2009-10 . This has been infinitely more inflationary than any drought. Now, world prices of grain went through the roof in 2008, following the diversion of large acreage across the world from food to bio-fuels . The government felt obliged to raise MSPs for Indian farmers too, arguing that Indian prices were still well below global rates.

However, world prices can fall dramatically, and this is not true of MSP, which no politician wants to ever reduce. Today, the wheat MSP is more than 20% below the Chicago price. India’s rice price is still competitive globally, but this owes much to free farm power for this most water-intensive of all grains. The MSP of wheat was, thankfully, increased only marginally in 2009-10 , but that of paddy shot up from Rs 850 to Rs 950/quintal.

Between 1965 and 1997, overall inflation in India averaged 8-9 % per year, and big hikes in MSP were compatible with this overall rate. But now we aim to bring inflation down to 4%, which implies dramatically controlling MSPs too. Indeed, world prices of cereals have fallen in real terms for two centuries, and we are now in danger of forcing up farm prices completely out of line with global ones. We may end up like Korea and Japan, which catered to small farmers by constantly pushing up rice prices until they were hundreds of percent higher than world prices.

The right approach is to not to give farmers ever-rising prices and subsidies but to facilitate their shift of out agriculture through massive provision of rural infrastructure and liberalised labour laws that encourage the hiring of workers. This will allow the average farm size to quadruple. That will be a better longterm source of farm prosperity than high MSPs.


The Economic Times, 16 March, 2010, http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/opinion/editorial/Government-led-inflation/articleshow/5688450.cms
 

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