Prime Minister Manmohan Singh today asked states to waive local taxes, including octroi, as well as reform the outdated Agriculture Produce Marketing Committee Act, or Mandi Act, to help control a runaway food inflation. The Prime Minister also called for dovetailing organised retail chains with farm supply chains. “Supply chains need to be strengthened and these need to be dovetailed with organised retail chains for quicker and more efficient distribution of farm...

India's food prices are likely to ease, bringing down food inflation from stubbornly high levels, over the next two months as supplies of onions and other vegetables are expected to pick up, industry officials said Thursday. The country's food inflation rate surged to more than 18% in December as vegetable prices, particularly those of onions, spiked after unseasonal rain damaged crops. India's food inflation rate has slightly eased since then, but...

If you thought only onion made headlines and governments fall, here is some more food for thought. The retail prices of brinjal soared 110% and those of tomato by 125% between the first weeks of November 2010 and January 2011, while the rise in crude oil paled in comparison, climbing about 12% in the same period. While import-dependent economies are struggling to keep their fiscal math in shape with crude...

The class bias in government policy is clear in the decision to release a small amount of foodgrain in the open market to tackle inflation. MOST people would agree that there is a strong element of speculation underlying the current inflation and that forward trading contributes to it. Yet the government, though it has banned forward trading in certain commodities under public pressure, is curiously reluctant to see this point....

The heat generated by the high food inflation may force the government to go slow, or even drop, some of its key proposals to open up the country's food and fertiliser sectors, experts say. Decontrolling sugar and urea and freeing up some farm exports are some of the proposals the government may not touch in the coming days, they say. The proposal on foreign direct investment in multi-brand retail may also...