Arvind Subramanian to submit report on incentivising pulses output next week

The report will include the level of MSP, kind of procurement it needs and the implications of this on other crops

Chief economic advisor Arvind Subramanian, who was asked to explore means to ramp up pulses production following spurt in the prices of the commodity in the country, will submit his report to the government in a week.

"About a month and half back, the government had asked me to write a report on incentivising pulses production through MSP (minimum support price) and related policies in the wake of rise in prices. I am currently preparing the report and hope to have some preliminary things to report back to the government next week", Subramanian said.

He was here to address the "Economic Survey Outreach" programme organised by the Xavier Institute of Management, Bhubaneswar (XIMB) and Odisha Television Ltd.

Subramanian said that his report will mainly look at "what should be the level of MSP, how should we set it, what kind of procurement we need and what are the implications of this on other crops."

A couple of months back, the prices of pulses had spurted in the market with rate of tur dal reaching Rs 170 to 200 per tonne in June, 2016.

The government had attributed the price rise to shortfall in domestic production due to adverse weather conditions and increase in demand because of rise in population and per capita income and change in food habits.

Asked if speculation, cartelization, black-marketing/hoarding also put pressure on prices, Subramanian said: "I think that, production is at the heart of the issues, because production came down so sharply and there was scarcity other things happened. The root cause was scarcity. That's why we should boost the production of pulses."

Ironically, the chief economic advisor will be submitting his report when pulses prices are expected to soften over the next few months on back of increase in acreage of pulses cultivation which is the highest in last five years.

Sowing of pulses has seen a jump of 35 per cent to 13.6 million hectares by August 3rd week, in the ongoing kharif season on good rains and higher market price, said an official statement.

If weather remains good, pulses production this year could reach 20 mn tonnes, which would be highest ever, helping in cutting down imports of the commodity to a considerable extent.