Describing the Indian retail sector as “primitive”, the panel on inflation today suggested that foreign investments in the multi-brand retail should be allowed at the earliest to check rising prices.
“India’s retail sector continues to be primitive…Its time for India to allow FDI in multi-product retail and IMG recommends that the government consider this at the earliest,” Chief Economic Advisor and head of the Inter-ministerial Group (IMG) Kaushik Basu told reporters here.
Besides opening the retail sector for FDI, the IMG also advocated reforms in agriculture marketing laws to reduce the gap between farm gate and retail prices and contain inflation “which has emerged as a major concern in the past few months”.
Headline inflation, stood at 8.66 per cent in April, much above the Reserve Bank’s comfort level of 5-6 per cent.
Food inflation was 8.55 per cent for the week ended May 14.
