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Govt to import food items to check rising prices: Pranab
New Delhi, Dec 17 (PTI)
The government will import essential commodities to improve supplies, Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee on Thursday said, as food inflation touched a ten-year high.
"Food prices are going up and this is an area of concern ... we have to take appropriate measures to see what best could be done by augmenting the supply through imports," he told reporters here.
Food inflation soared to a decade's high of 19.95 per cent for the week ended December 5 on rising prices of essential food items like potato, other vegetables and pulses.
The Standing Committee on Finance in its report tabled in Parliament earlier in the day, pulled up the Finance Ministry for not taking timely action to contain inflation and asked the government to put a temporary embargo on essential food items like onions and amend the Essential Commodities Act to check hoarding and speculation.
A host of steps, including zero import duty on wheat, pulses and crude edible oil and allowing imports of various commodities like sugar and rice, have already been taken by the government to tame food prices.
RBI, which had earlier pegged the fiscal-end overall inflation at 5 per cent, revised its forecast to 6.5 per cent and is expected to increase interest rate in January review of its monetary policy.
Government on one hand, ignore the farming community in our country, on the other hand, imports food to fulfill food necessities. How can we call it as an intelligent decision to spend money on something we need not to. In the name of development, government is building factories on agricultural lands which pollute the air, never take actions against the corrupted mediators among farmers and government because of which price rises in the market. Never try to re-establish the farmers who are leaving their lands and coming to cities only because they are not getting anything out of farming. All these results in food declination and then, in the name of fulfilling food needs import foods which will overburden us with the loans we already owe to other countries. Why are they not trying to empower farmers instead of importing food items? Once we used to export food and today we are importing the same. Its so sad....
