IMPHAL, Jan 7: Union Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee has urged all the state governments to ensure that all bottlenecks in the supply chain are removed at the earliest and the availability of the items that are driving the current round of food inflation in the economy, is improved so that food price can be brought down quickly.
According to a release of PIB, Imphal, the union Finance Minister drawing the attention of state governments to the build up in food inflation is the last few weeks, in his official letter to all the Chief Ministers has mentioned that in the last few weeks, the food articles inflation has shown a rising trend and stands at 18.3% for the week ending December 25 last year.
The release further mentioned that, the Finance Minister has stated that musch of this inflation has been due to significant increase in the price of a few primary items like fruits and vegetables, milk, meat, poultry, eggs and fish. He has also mentioned in his letter that the inflation data that was released yesterday shows the three-fourth of food inflation is due to rising prices of vegetables, and nearly one-fourth is due to milk prices.
The release further mentioned that, the Union Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee said that in the current financial year, the prices of cereals and pulses have declined sharply and continue to do so even in the recent weeks when the trend in food inflation has reversed. While there are some weather induced supply constraints on some of the items currently seen at this time of the year, a larger part of price rise is due to the widening gap between the wholesale and retail prices and the growing demands for these products due to rising income levels, writes the Finance Minister, the release added.
It is also further mentioned that, the union Finance Minister said that from a high of nearly 21% in April last year due to the collective efforts, the year-on-year food inflation declined at 8.60% on November 20 last year and this trend has reversed since then.
The release further added that, in this context, the Finance Minister mentioned that, he would like to request the Chief Ministers to urgently look into the supply management to items that are driving the current round of food inflation in the economy, in particular the local factors that are widening the gap between the wholesale and retail prices. He asked the state governments to ensure that all bottlenecks in the supply chain are removed at the earliest and the availability of the food items causing inflation is improved so their prices can be down quickly, the PIB statement added.
