At a price review meeting yesterday, Cabinet Secretary K M Chandrasekhar told department heads to ready media dockets and ads conveying the message that surging inflation in the country is largely the outcome of the global impact on the country’s economy and, what is more significant, is comparatively less than those prevailing the world over.

Chandrasekhar suggested that each department prepare a comparative statement for each product showing that its price rise here was less than in the rest of the world.

“Each ministry has to issue comparative price list, the trend over the last six months, and how it has been fuelled by external factors,” said a Food Ministry official who attended the meeting of Committee of Secretaries on Prices. The campaign will also highlight the series of steps taken by the government to hold the price line.

Citing an example, the official said that while wheat prices have risen by 200 per cent in global markets, in India the climb was 17 per cent in the last one year. Similarly, rice was priced 80 to 100 per cent higher than last year’s level the world-over while the increase was a mere seven per cent in the domestic market.

He said that the campaign proposal would be discussed by the Cabinet Secretary with the Information & Broadcasting Secretary who was absent at yesterday’s meeting.

Inflation, as measured by the Wholesale Price Index, jumped to a new 13-year high of 11.42 per cent for the week ended June 14 from 11.05 per cent a week ago on the back of a rise in prices of food items, petroleum and steel products. While Finance Minister P. Chidambaram has said that inflation would remain in “double digit for some more weeks,” the opposition BJP and the Left have used the numbers to slam the government.