High inflation not because of govt policies: Montek
High spate of inflation that country is facing since March was not a result of any government policy, Planning Commission Deputy Chairman Montek Singh Ahluwalia said on Wednesday.
By PTI |
NEW DELHI: High spate of inflation that country is facing since March was not a result of any government policy, Planning Commission Deputy Chairman Montek Singh Ahluwalia said on Wednesday.
"Inflation that we are facing now is not an inflation caused by anything that the government has done," he said while launching a book on entrepreneurs in India and China by Harward Business School Professor Tarun Khanna. The annual inflation rate has been firming up in March and climbed to 42-month high of 7.61 per cent in April.
Recalling the steps taken by the government to contain prices, Ahluwalia said: "You have exceptionally bad ways of handling inflation and we have not done that." Pointing out that steel prices have gone up by 56 per cent in one year, he said there was nothing wrong in government being concerned about inflation.
Ahluwalia, however, parried the question whether the government was contemplating to roll back export duty imposed recently to discourage exports. The RBI, he added, was doing what any other central bank would have done to contain money supply and check price rise.
Referring to performance of the economy during the post-reform period, Ahluwalia said, the difference between growth rates in India and China, which was quite large in the past, has narrowed to about 2 per cent. "China has far few elections than we have," he quipped.
"If you regard the government as general practitioner looking at the health of a patient. This is not the doctor that you would want to fire. Nor a doctor you would say is doing an exceptionally bad job," Ahluwalia added.
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India, he said, would need to do much more to improve upon the growth rate of 8 per cent and raise it to 9 per cent in the coming years to achieve the Plan target.Download
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