Prime Minister Dr Manmohan Singh will chair the Cabinet Committee on Prices (CCP) meeting that will be held on Wednesday to discuss the issue of spiraling food prices, including sugar prices. Manmohan Singh is expected to take decisions on increasing the availability of sugar and other commodities, to contain food inflation. Food inflation had soared to 20 percent since the first week of December. The meeting was earlier scheduled to...

Without policy efforts to deal specifically with issues such as reduced incomes and unemployment, the global economic crisis will be far from over. FOR most economic commentators, 2010 begins on an optimistic note. Just a year ago, there was much gloom about the world economy. The worst financial crisis since the Great Depression had broken out in full fury; asset markets in the United States, Europe and then most developing...

Patna-based Central Potato Research Institute (CPRI) has developed three varieties of potato as a New Year gift for farmers and potato consumers who were hit by the rise in the price of the commodity last year. The CPRI scientists have named the new varieties as kufary suya, pushkar and khyati. These offer better productivity and will be richer in protein and iron. They will have the average level of sugar. The principal...

It is presumed that the industrial development in Bihar is hampered by lack of investments. Is it because of 'unproductive' government policies or an unpredictable law and order situation? And how to increase the flow of investment in the state? In order to find out answers to all such questions and debate these issues, Business Standard Hindi recently organised a roundtable in Patna. The seminar was attended by various small...

Packaged sugar now costs Rs 46 a kilogram in the retail market and there are no signs of prices levelling off. With loose sugar also costing Rs 43-44 a kg, the poly-packed product is inexorably moving towards the Rs 50 a kg mark, with the government appearing helpless in containing the spiralling prices. The steady rise in sugar prices since the second half of last year is a consequence of...