The Government has resorted to several measures in consultation with Ministries to control the prices and improve the availability of essential commodities. The steps in operation inter-alia include allowing import of various items of mass consumption at zero or concessional import duties together with restrictions on exports, prescribing stockholding limits under Essential Commodities Act and allocation of foodgrains under TPDS to BPL and APL families. This information was given by the Minister of Consumer Affairs, Food and Public Distribution, Prof. K.V. Thomas in a written reply in Rajya Sabha today.
Minister said that during the last three months, in the four metro cities of Delhi, Mumbai. Kolkata and Chennai, the retail prices of rice, gram dal, arhar dal, moong dal, sugar and groundnut oil showed constant to declining trend while the prices of wheat, urad dal, masur dal, milk, palm oil, onion and tomato showed an increasing trend.
Price increase of commodities including vegetables like onion and tomato could be due to several factors such as prevalent demand-supply mismatch, increase in cost of inputs, weather conditions etc.
