Sugar prices to fall within a week,says Pawar

Food and agriculture minister Sharad Pawar told reporters that the Prime Minister would convene a meeting of chief ministers in the last week of this month to discuss the prices situation and take stern action against hoarders. These steps,Pawar said,“would definitely impact the price situation… prices would come down in 4 to 8 days.”

“The Prime Minister will hold a meeting of chief ministers in the last week of January to review implementation of the Essential Commodities Act (ECA) with a view to prevent hoarding of essential commodities and also ensure full lifting of wheat and rice allocated to the states,” Pawar said.

He underlined that state governments will have to play a “more active role” in checking price-rise by way of effective dehoarding of essential commodities and intervening in retail markets of non-PDS items through their agencies.

“One important issue for discussion in the CMs meet would be the observation that retail prices of many commodities are found to be unusually higher than the wholesale prices of those commodities” If state governments keep an eye on these trends,we can effectively control the prices,” Pawar said.

“The Central government has no authority to regulate mandis,and states will have to take the responsibility on this count” While the Centre is bearing a huge subsidy burden for making available cheap foodgrains to vulnerable sections under the PDS,I would request states to suspend their taxes in these circumstances as many states impose high taxes that raise food prices,” he said.

“In the last two months we have allotted a sizeable amount of foodgrains to states for retail consumers. We have allocated two million tonnes of wheat and one million tonne of rice to states for distribution to retail consumers over and above normal PDS allocation. But,offtake of these have been meagre with states lifting only over 1.5 lakh tonnes of wheat and over two lakh tonnes of rice during this period,” Pawar said,adding that the meeting of chief ministers would “review” release mechanisms.

“Wherever state governments are not lifting the stock,the system of release will be reviewed… we will find other mechanism (to deal with it).”