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Jaitley was speaking at a seminar organised by NABARD where he mentioned that the Minister of Agriculture has informed him that with better rainfall, productivity of pulses are going to be higher.
The June Consumer Price Index (CPI) inflation data is due this week and this would be the last retail inflation data before the Reserve Bank of India’s third bi-monthly monetary policy statement on August 4.
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CPI inflation rose to a three-month high of 5.01% in May compared with 4.87% in April. However, retail food inflation eased to 4.80% from 5.11% in April. In a year ago period, it had stood at 8.89%.
Data from India Meteorological Department (IMD) showed that between July 2 and July 8, India received around 30.1 millimetres of rainfall as against a normal 61.4 millimetres.
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Overall, in the whole southwest monsoon season starting from June 1, the rains have been 4% below normal, mainly due to good performance in central, southern and western India in the month of June.
RBI has set an inflation target of less than 6% by January 2016 and 4% (+/- 2) by end of the two years starting 2016-17. Since the start of 2015 RBI has cut the repo rate or the rate at which banks borrow from the central bank by 75 bps and it currently stands at 7.25%.
The last rate cut was in June.
