By all indications, FDI in multi-brand retail is a fait accompli. Or so we have been told time and again by everyone, the PM downward. The “question is at what point of time it should be done”. This remark from Pranab Mukherjee in a post-budget TV interview may have revealed that the debate has moved beyond whether to permit FDI in multi-brand retailing—the lifeline of small- and medium-sized neighbourhood stores....

Prof Abhijit Sen, member of the Planning Commission, discusses Budget provisions related to the agriculture sector in an interview with Rajesh Bhayani and Sanjeeb Mukherjee. Sen feels, futures trading in essentials commodities like wheat and rice should not be allowed. According to him, India should follow China in having an agency for procuring commodities from the global market. There seems to a renewed focus in this Budget on ancillary items of...

In an address to the Berlin Agriculture Ministers meeting last month, World Trade Organisation (WTO) Director General Pascal Lamy said export restrictions are a prime cause of recent surges in global food prices, and countries should find other ways of securing domestic supplies (“WTO chief: Alternatives to food export curbs needed”, Business Standard, January 23). Though export restrictions are an important contributor to rising food prices, they are by no...

There’s both good news and bad news on the food front.   The good news is that wheat, maize and pulses production during the current year will be the highest that India has seen. Wheat production was expected to be high, thanks to the twin advantages of a high procurement price —- higher than international prices —- and favourable weather conditions. But pulses production too has zoomed, because of the soaring prices in the...

After increasing slowly and steadily from historic lows, world rice prices tripled in just six months during 2007-08. The price surge caused much anxiety because so many of the world’s poor are rice consumers. And it caught many by surprise as market fundamentals were sound. Indeed, it was government policies, rather than changes in the production and consumption of rice, that drove the surge. This suggests that improved government policies...