Sat, August 22, 2009
NEW DELHI, Aug. 22 (Xinhua) -- With the production of food grains and agricultural commodities set to fall because of drought, Indian government will import those items that will be in short supply to meet the demand, and a top government official told the media Saturday.
"Decision is already there that whichever commodity will be in short supply, to maintain demand-supply mechanism, we shall go for imports," Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee said.
He said that there is already a short supply of pulses and edible oil in the market.
Mukherjee, however, said that the government will not announce the timing of the import to ensure that prices are not jacked up artificially by the international players.
"The moment news is spread that India is going for big import, the market prices are jacked up," he said.
On the impact of drought, the Finance Minister said that "it does not affect only production, it has an overall cascading impact. Scanty rainfall will affect recharge of ground water."
He assured the country that the government has the experience to deal with such situations and "we need not lose confidence in ourselves".
Indian government will have an estimated 18 million tons of wheat as of April 1, 2010 and 13.6 million tons of rice as of October 1, 2009, he said.
India has declared drought due to monsoon deficiency this year which is bringing hardship to the country's farmers and soaring food prices in the market.
