Pulses prices to ease on harvest: Jaitley

Jaitley said that retail inflation has come to down to about 4 per cent from 12 per cent since the Congress went out of power last year

As high prices of pulses continue to hurt consumers, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley on Tuesday said the rates will come down soon in view of good harvest and action taken against hoarders. With the government under attack from opposition parties on the issue, Jaitley said retail inflation has come to down to about four per cent from 12 per cent last year.

He suggested that prices of pulses grew also because proper action was not taken by states against hoarders. “The rate of inflation has come down in the last one-and-a-half years. Prices of many commodities have come down. But there are some products, whose arrival is less in the Indian market as well as foreign markets. The requirement of pulses is 22 million tonnes (mt) in India. We increased production up to 17 mt, but still we are short of five mt,” Jaitley said.

“Most of the countries from where we used to import pulses have also recorded low production. Some traders took benefit from it and hoarded the commodity. It was the state governments’ responsibility to take action and carry out raids,” he said.

With the intervention of the Centre and states in the past few days, a large number of raids have been carried out against hoarders and prices of pulses have come down, he said.

“Pulses from the Rabi crop have also started coming. There is also arrival of pulses in international market,” he said expressing hope that the yield of the next harvest is expected to be better, which will further bring down the prices.

He said that in almost all states, the price of pulse has started becoming moderate in last five seven days and it is being sold at Rs 120 per kg in Safal shops in Delhi.

Slamming Prime Minister Narendra Modi for skyrocketing prices of pulses with arhar dal costing more than Rs 200 a kg, Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar had yesterday said in Patna, "Earlier people used to chant 'Har har Modi' and now they chant 'Arhar Modi'... People are saying forget 'Achche din' (BJP's pre-Lok Sabha slogan) and return our 'Purane din' (old days).