Hoarding plays spoilsport for price rise: Pawar
The Centre on Monday admitted hoarding was one of the reasons for rise in prices of essential commodities and said states can put stock holding limits on wheat and pulses.
By Agencies |
NEW DELHI: The Centre on Monday admitted hoarding was one of the reasons for rise in prices of essential commodities and said states can put stock holding limits on wheat and pulses.
“The government is fully alive to the issue of hoarding of essential commodities. It has, therefore, authorised state governments to prescribe stock holding limits on wheat and pulses,” agriculture and food minister Sharad Pawar informed Lok Sabha in a written reply. The minister said there was no proposal to involve intelligence agencies to check hoarding.
Mr Pawar said prices of essential commodities were rising due to a variety of factors such as domestic production, quantity of imports, hoarding, international prices and consumption requirement impacting on the demand and supply side. Listing the measures taken by the government to contain inflation, Mr Pawar said the cash reserve ratio (CRR) has been raised by the Reserve Bank to 6.50% from April 28.
The farm minister also said government has allowed duty free import of wheat and pulses as part of the measures to check price rise. He said there was a ban on export of pulses from June 22 last year, while the export ban on wheat and skimmed milk powder was imposed on February 9, this year.
He said state-run companies have contracted for import around 2.9 lakh tonnes of pulses till April 25 to augment domestic availability for containing the rise in the prices of the commodities. Of the 2.9 lakh tonnes that have been contracted by the four state-owned agencies —Nafed, PEC, STC and MMTC — 52,039 tonnes of pulses have so far arrived at various ports, Mr Pawar said in a written reply.
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STC has contracted one lakh tonnes of urad and yellow peas (white matar), of which 11,145 tonnes have arrived. MMTC is importing 79,000 tonnes of pulses out of which only 5,580 tonnes have reached the Indian ports. Nafed has contracted 70,000 tonnes of urad and moong and it has received so far 24,314 tonnes. PEC is importing 38,000 tonnes of urad, moong and tur, of which 11,000 tonnes has arrived at ports till April 25, 2007.
The farm minister said the government has decided to import 15 lakh tonnes of pulses such as urad, tur (arhar), moong, masoor, chana and yellow peas through these four trading agencies. The imported pulses would be sold by these agencies through public tender, he added.
“The supply of imported pulses will augment domestic availability and thus help in containing the rise in prices,” the minister said.
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Meanwhile, Mr Pawar ruled out government directly importing edible oil. He said edible oils come under open general licence (OGL). Imports have been resorted to augment domestic availability since there has been a continuous demand-supply mismatch, he added. Too busy to trade in stocks? Invest in Mutual Funds with ET Money!
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