New
Delhi: Finance minister P Chidambaram today said in
Parliament that the government would continue with fiscal,
monetary and supply side measures to bring down inflation
and would not hesitate to import food grains and pulses
if needed.
Referring
to the previous NDA government, the FM said, the government
then took 12-18 months to moderate the inflation rate
in 2000-01 when it hovered over eight per cent for 12
weeks and above six per cent for 48 out of 52 weeks.
Replying
to MPs during question hour, Chidambaram said, that the
current inflation was not as high as 2000-01. "We
are confident, inflation will be moderated," he asserted.
Last
week, the inflation had declined to 6.02 per cent from
6.5 per cent earlier and the finance minister said that
it could be expected to decline further when wheat and
potato crops came in to the market.
He
said that the consumer price index-based inflation rate
for agricultural labourers and rural labourers for December
2006 was 8.94 per cent and 8.31 per cent respectively,
primarily due to the high rate of inflation of food articles
which has a substantial weightage in the commodity basket
of these indices, he said.
In
the Indian context, he said, that demand-supply mismatch
was the primary source for fuelling inflation.
Production
of wheat and pulses was far short of demand and in the
long-term augmenting production and productivity was essential
to delete the gap. "There is stagnation in production
of wheat, paddy and pulses," he said, adding that
the budget for 2007-08 addresses the shortcoming on the
supply side by addressing key factors like water, seeds,
fertilizers, power and farm credit.
In
response to a supplementary, he said the government did
not allow the export of pulses and allegations against
three exporters for defying the ban were under investigation.
Over
the last one year, the government had imported 55-lakh
tonnes of wheat but could not source pulses, he disclosed.
The reason, he said, was because the pulses consumed in
India were grown only in Myanmar, Turkey and in small
quantities in Canada.
The
finance minister also said that while crude oil prices
had declined
by an all-time high of over $75 dollars barrel, metal
prices had risen in international markets.
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