All speculation can come to rest with the Planning Commission estimating that inflation will come down to 3.5 per cent only by March next year, reports Chetan Chauhan.
All speculation can come to rest with the Planning Commission estimating that inflation will come down to 3.5 per cent only by March next year.
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In the commission’s internal assessment, the inflation is expected to rise to 8.5 per cent in the next three months, before it starts to come down. The inflation this week was pegged at 7.82 per cent from 3.7 per cent at the beginning of 2008.
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Planning Commission Deputy Chairperson Montek Singh Ahluwalia had earlier this week said at a function in Delhi that inflation would come down in the next three to four months. “Given a certain amount of patience, inflation will come down in three-four months. Prevailing uncertainities in the economy would have resolved themselves by the end of 2008,” he had said.
The commission’s assessment is that after the monsoon, inflation will start falling with the influx of food items in the domestic market and some respite in the international food market.
Till the monsoon ends, the government will have also strengthened its buffer zone of wheat and rice with additional procurement from the market, thereby providing stability to the volatile domestic food market, the commission had said.
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The commission believes that by the time the government will present vote on account in Parliament next year because of general elections, the pressure of inflation would have eased out. “The estimate of 3.5 percent inflation is on the basis of our expectation that agriculture production would rise to over three percent, thereby providing relief,” a commission official said.
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The commission believes that by the time the government will present vote on account in Parliament next year because of general elections, the pressure of inflation would have eased out. “The estimate of 3.5 percent inflation is on the basis of our expectation that agriculture production would rise to over three percent, thereby providing relief,” a commission official said.
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The UPA government can expect inflation to hover around five percent during winter when preparations for the next general elections would be on full swing. The commission’s estimate can provide some respite to the UPA government, which is facing heat for rising inflation in the past few months.
Chetan Chauhan is the National Affairs Editor looking into all aspects of news and features from across India. A Chevening scholar with over three decades of experience in reporting and news management, Chetan has extensively covered all important aspects of the social sector, political economy, environment and climate change nationally and internationally. He did a journalism course at the Reuters Institute of Journalism in Oxford and Digital Media training at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. He started as a reporter with The Statesman in 1996 and joined the Hindustan Times in 2000 in the metro bureau covering environment, crime and Delhi politics. He covered hot local news, from the Jessica Lal murder case to the rebellion of Delhi Congress MLAs against then Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit, to the replacement of toxic vehicle fuel with cleaner compressed natural gas (CNG) in the national capital. Some of his stories on air pollution became part of the Supreme Court’s landmark MC Mehta versus Government of India case in the National Capital Region (NCR), forcing the government to take corrective measures. As part of the national political bureau since 2004, he covered important central sectors such as environment, education, social justice, labour, rural development, water resources, renewable energy, agriculture, broadcasting and the Planning Commission for more than a decade producing several exclusive and investigative breaking stories. His specialisation is the environment, having covered at least a dozen United Nations global conferences on climate change, biodiversity and wildlife including climate summits in Paris, Copenhagen and Bali. He also covered India’s two five-year plans ---11th and 12th and reported on drafting and execution of right based laws such as Right to Education, Right to Information and rural job guarantee law, MG-NREGA, now being introduced in new format as VG-RAM-G Act. He has in-depth knowledge of social sector issues. He was one of the first to report on tigers vanishing from Sariska and Panna wildlife reserves in 2004 and 2008, respectively, leading to the setting up of the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) and the introduction of stringent penal provisions for poaching. He has written extensively on the rising human-animal conflict in India and the degradation of India’s biodiversity hotspots because of mining and other activities. Since 2004, Chetan has covered Parliament comprehensively and participated in training on the nuanced coverage of Parliament proceedings. He has travelled extensively across India to cover national and provincial elections since 1998, especially in the Hindi heartland states, considered India’s road to power. He writes a regular column for Hindustan Times, Ecostani, on important national politics, economy, Himalayan ecology and environmental issues. His other responsibilities include providing inputs for edits and edit page articles for the publication, apart from managing news flow from across India.
