‘On most items, India’s inflation rate lower than the world’s’

According to Union Minister Piyush Goyal, tomato prices are beyond govt. control

Tomato prices are beyond the government’s control but inflation on most items is lower in India than the rest of the world, Commerce, Industry, Food and Public Distribution Minister Piyush Goyal said on Friday.

The government is monitoring prices on a daily basis, with a three-tier system of an inter-Ministerial group of officials, a Committee of Secretaries under the Cabinet Secretary and a ministerial group led by Home Affairs Minister Amit Shah, which also includes the ministers of Finance and Agriculture, Mr. Goyal said. 

“This is why when you compare with the rest of the world, on most items, our inflation has been generally lower,” the minister asserted. “There will be a few cases that are beyond our control like tomatoes -- every year, for maybe 50 years now, there has been spikes in prices in a few months and then it goes down to literally uneconomical levels. Traders and farmers tend to average their returns,” he observed.

Noting that the government does not feel the need for any fresh interventions to cool prices for any product at this point, Mr. Goyal pointed out that palm oil prices are up fourfold globally, but local prices are not.