JOIN USJobs bigger priority for govt than inflation: Nirmala Sitharaman
Inflation is not as a “red-lettered” priority in India at the moment but job creation is, finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman said on Wednesday amid price rise showing some signs of abatement.
A private suvey by CMIE showed unemployment in August crossed 8 per cent mark, hitting the highest in the past one year. Urban unemployment neared 10 per cent.
India’s retail inflation continues to remain above RBI’s upper tolerance zone of 6 per cent since January this year. Retail inflation was at 6.71 per cent in July. The latest data showed.
“Some, of course, are red-lettered (priorities), some may not be. Red-lettered ones of course be jobs, equitable wealth distribution and making sure India is moving on the path of growth. In that sense, inflation is not red-lettered,” she said at the US-India Business Council’s ‘India Idea Summit’.
“India does not have the luxury of sequencing priorities and efforts to tackle them must take place simultaneously,” she said.
On inflation, the minister said that India in the past couple of months has shown that it was able to bring down inflation to a manageable level.
India’s retail inflation, which ruled above 7 per cent between April and June, has come down to 6.71 per cent in July on the back of softening food prices.
The Reserve Bank of India hiked the key policy interest rates three times this year to 5.4 per cent to tame inflation. The central bank has forecast that inflation will remain high into 2023.
On the crude and natural gas front, Sitharaman said, the uncertainty over their availability still persisted in the wake of the Russia-Ukraine conflict triggering the energy crisis.
She exuded confidence that the RBI will manage volatility emerging out of the US Federal Reserve and European Central Bank.
The RBI will announce the next monetary policy on September 30 and is likely to be less aggressive in its pronouncement on rate hike.