Inflation may stay at current elevated level for coming 3-months: Rangarajan

21 Sep 2011 Evaluate

The Prime Minister’s Economic Advisory Council (PMEAC) chairman C Rangarajan expects inflation to stay at current elevated level for coming three months and the Reserve Bank of India’s stance on inflation depends on the inflation scenario in the coming three weeks.

C Rangarajan said “Monetary policy has a role to play even in supply-side inflation,” while hinting that the RBI may hike its key rates to tame inflation, if inflation stays at current level. However, he expects inflation to come down to 7% by the end of current financial year. The headline inflation, measured by the Wholesale Price Index (WPI), have been hovering around 9% from last December and for month of August it stood at 9.78%, which is very close to two digit mark.

As per the PMEAC Chairman, weak recovery in global economy and uncertainties in eurozone has raised the difficulties in restricting the current account deficit and fiscal deficit, as uncertainties in investor nations like eurozone counties and United States, will affect the capital inflow into the country.

Expenditure side management is also getting difficult on account of ballooning subsidies, especially due to international oil prices, to keep the fiscal deficit at 4.6% of the GDP as targeted, PMEAC chairman said.

However, adding further he said the economy had potential to grow at 9% but the short and medium term constraints, including inflation, were to be attended to realize the potential. But he stressed on the balancing growth and inflation in the domestic economy, by strict monetary and fiscal policy measures, to manage supply and demand side inflation.

On the impact of slowdown in eurozone and US economy, he said that the Indian IT sector might get impacted to the extent of economic slowdown in the US and Eurozone. However, he expects that the US economy will not enter into negative growth zone.

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