Government Committed to Ensure Price Stability; Steps taken to Check Inflation in Commodity Market Especially Food Inflation

Government is committed to ensuring price stability and is closely monitoring the situation and taking measures on an ongoing basis to bring down inflation. Some of the important steps taken during the last three years in this regard include: reducing import duties to zero – for wheat, onion and pulses and imposing stock limits on various commodities; suspending futures’ trading in rice, urad and tur as a matter of abundant precaution; maintaining the Central Issue Price (CIP) for rice (at ₹ 5.65 per kg for BPL and ₹ 3 per kg for Antyodya Anna Yojana) and wheat (at ₹ 4.15 per kg for BPL and ₹ 2 per kg for Antyodya Anna Yojana) since 2002 for protecting the poor from price rise; allocating rice and wheat under the Open Market Sales scheme; banning exports of essential items for a short period whenever required.

Some specific measures taken recently to contain food inflation include:

• Recommending the delisting of fruits and vegetables from the purview of Agriculture Produce Marketing Committee Acts of the States; this has since been implemented by Delhi.
• Fixing/revising minimum export price of US $ 500 per MT and US $ 450 per MT on the export of onions and potatoes, respectively.
• Approving the inclusion of onions and potatoes under the purview of stock holding limits under the Essential Commodities Act, 1955. This will empower the State Governments to undertake de-hoarding operations and to control the prices of onions and potatoes.
• Allocating additionally 50 lakh tones of rice for distribution to BPL families at BPL prices and above poverty line price for others for the period July 2014 to March 2015 or till implementation of the National Food Security Act (NFSA) by the respective State/UT, whichever is earlier.

This information was given by the Minister of State for Finance, Smt. Nirmala Sitharaman in written reply to a question in Lok Sabha today.