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LATEST NEWS UPDATES | High inflation needn't be cost of growth by Subodh Varma

High inflation needn't be cost of growth by Subodh Varma

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published Published on Mar 6, 2011   modified Modified on Mar 6, 2011
Is price rise going to be a permanent fixture because of India's high growth rate? This appears to be the argument put forward by the government's top economic advisers in the recently issued Economic Survey. It argues that historical experience shows that consumer prices increase faster in countries going through a fast growth phase compared to those with slower growth rates.

But analysing inflation and growth data collected by the International Monetary Fund ( IMF) for the past three decades shows that there is no such correlation. In China, the average annual growth rate during 2005-09 was 11.4% while the average annual inflation was just 2.7% in that period. Clearly, high growth and low inflation can coexist.

Conversely, there can be low growth rate and high inflation. In India, during 1990-94, annual GDP growth was just 4.7%, but inflation was soaring at an average of 10.2% per year.

There have been extreme cases too of this correlation breaking down. In the 1980s and early 1990s, Brazil went through hyperinflation with prices rising by an astounding average of nearly 1700% during 1990-94 while the growth rate plummeted to just 1.4%. In Russia, after the ushering in of the market economy, inflation raged at 234% during 1990-94, while the economy shrank by 4.3% per annum.

In the 26 developing economies of Asia — which essentially means Asia minus Japan and West Asia — the average annual growth rate has been over 6.5% since 1980, yet the inflation rate has ranged from 2.7% in 2000-04 to 10.9% in 1985-89. In fact, as recently as during 2005-09, these economies grew at an average of 9.2% per year keeping the annual inflation rate at a manageable 4.8%.

The nature of India's current bout of inflation is also a pointer to the fact that it is not a product of growth. It is largely driven by a rise in prices of food items. Wholesale prices of all commodities have risen by about 38% between 2005 and 2010, but prices of food items have jumped by over 77%. Some food items have seen even bigger hikes like vegetables (101%), milk, eggs, meat and fish (80%).

Some argue that this is because rising per capita incomes — a result of growth — are driving up the demand for food, particularly high-value foods like vegetables, milk, poultry and meat. The problem with the argument is that if it were true, we would expect to see an increase in the per capita calorific intake as well. What has actually happened is quite the contrary. Between 1993-94 and 2004-05, the average daily calorific intake in rural areas declined by almost 5%, while in urban areas it fell by about 2.5%, according to data from the National Sample Survey Organisation (NSSO).

Similarly, computations done by Surajit Mazumdar of the Institute for Studies in Industrial Development on the basis of data from various editions of the Annual Survey of Industry show that real wages in the organized industrial sector were significantly lower (about 14%) in 2008-09 than in 1995-96.

It might make more sense, therefore, to look at the supply side in food items to see what is driving the current spike in prices.

The Times of India, 6 March, 2011, http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/High-inflation-neednt-be-cost-of-growth/articleshow/7637487.cms


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