“I would expect inflation to be less than 8 per cent in April,” he told reporters. He further said the inter-ministerial group (IMG) on inflation, constituted to suggest measures to control spiralling prices, will meet next month after RBI’s annual monetary policy review on May 3.

Basu said the government would have to come out with new measures to control inflation amid high global commodity prices and the policy followed by several economies of making available large cash flow into market.

“We will have to go on the drafting board and think in terms of measures that we can take. Some of them have to be quite different from the measures we are used to because this is a new kind of inflation,” he said. Meanwhile, he described as a matter of concern for the global economy the decision of credit ratings agency Standard & Poor’s to downgrade US sovereign debt outlook from stable to negative.

“It is a matter of concern for everybody. Not just for the US, but also for the other economies,” he said at the Assocham conference. He, however, hoped that the powerful economies will be set back to correction.

S&P, on Monday, said it has revised its outlook on long-term rating of the US sovereign from stable to negative, indicating it can be downgraded.