CONTAINING INFLATION NOT THAT MUCH EASY

As retail inflation crossed the double-digit mark, Finance Minister P Chidambaram today said the government is looking at various suggestions to cool prices but there were no easy answers to the problem. "Both RBI and the government are trying number of measures to cool inflation... We are looking at various suggestion that we have got. I am open to suggestion but I am afraid that there is no easy answers to cool retail inflation," he said while addressing investors here. The CPI inflation, measured by movement in the retail prices of food items, soared to a seven-month high of 10.09 per cent in October. The wholesale price-based inflation too shot up to 8-month high of 7 per cent in the same month. He attributed the rising inflation to the high fiscal deficit incurred by the government to neutralise the impact of global financial meltdown of 2008. The Minister further said although the government had offloaded 5 lakh tones of wheat to contain price rise, it would not cool prices of fruit, vegetable, milk and eggs.