Government should try to target an inflation rate of 4%: Kaushik Basu

15 Jul 2011 Evaluate

Government expects inflation to moderate in the remaining nine months of the current financial year. Chief economic advisor Kaushik Basu anticipates headline inflation to moderate to around 6% by March 2012 from the current rate of 9.44% even as he said food inflation might stay elevated due to base effect. Inflation has been more than 9% from last December 2010.

Kaushik Basu said, 'I am expecting the headline inflation to come down to little over 6% by March 2012, and by adding further he said that the government should try to target an inflation rate of 4%.

Headline inflation measured by wholesale price index (WPI) surged to 9.44% in June from 9.06% in May. Government also revised upward inflation figures for the month of April, after revision it stood at 9.74% from 8.66%, which is highest for the current calendar year.     

Meanwhile, weekly food inflation measured by WPI, for the week ended July 2 surged to 8.31% from seven-week low level of 7.61% of last week, due to increasing price of protein based items, vegetables and cereals.

Since March 2010, to curb inflation, the Reserve Bank of India, have increased its interest rates for the 10 times, however it failed to control inflation and had affected the growth of the economy. On July 26, RBI is expected to go for the 11th hike, despite the risk of moderation in economic expansion.   

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