The Ministry of Consumer Affairs, Food, and Public Distribution said the centre constantly monitors inflation and also takes proactive measures to control it.
Days ago, the government also extended the Pradhan Mantri Garib Kalyan Ann Yojana (PMGKAY) till December 2022 to provide safety cover to the poor section of the country. It is worth mentioning, that the scheme helped people in getting access to food during the COVID pandemic. The extension of the scheme will ensure that the people do not suffer during the festival season this year.
The Ministry has reported that there has been a fall in retail and wholesale prices wheat and rice. However, price of flour remained stable last week.
According to the Ministry, the centre is prepared to deal with any kind of price rise of wheat and rice. In such cases the government is also ready to take steps like export ban in case of surge in demand of wheat and rice in the nation.
From past two to three years, there has been fewer incidents of shoot in price of rice and wheat, as the government has increased the Minimum Support Price (MSP) from last few years. During the previous fiscal year, the centre introduced an open market sale scheme to curb the rising prices. Under the scheme, around 80 lakh metric tonnes of food grains were offloaded in the open market.
In another attempt to curb rising food price, government imposed ban on rice export last month.As India is one of the largest rice exporters of the world, this decision also impacted the global supply chain. The decision was taken due to the delay in planting and deficit rainfall that hit the production. With a significant impact of uneven rainfall, centre can impose more such curbs on rice exports in the coming future.
(With inputs from ANI)
