AP Govt initiates steps to control price rise: Minister

Hyderabad, Aug 31 (UNI) Andhra Pradesh Minister for Agriculture N Raghuveera Reddy today told State Assembly that the Government was making all out efforts to ensure the prices of essential commodities in the Open market within the reach of the consumers.

Mr Reddy said the State Government had been taking necessary steps to ensure that the prices of essential commodities remained under control and within the reach of the consumers.

He said the price fluctuation of various items in the basket of goods and services was an important economic phenomenon and various factors responsible for this, including continuous rise in prices of petroluem products.

The inflationary trend in petroluem products affected almost all the sectors of our national economy and controlling its impact had its limitations even at the National level, he added.

He said Oil Marketing companies with the approval of the Central Government had been enhancing the prices of petroluem products, based on the prices of the crude in the international market in order to maintain the Import Price parity. The prices of pulses had shown consistent increase from November, 2005.

2005.

He said to check the price rise, AP Markfed had been asked to purchase blackgram dall and greengram dal from the wholesale dealers by calling quotations based on the indents given by the Joint Collectors.

He said the State Government was fully committed to provide remunerative prices of pulses to the farmers. The Central Government had been requested to increase the Minimum Support Price of the pulses to Rs 1750 per quintal to encourage the farmers to increase the production and availability of the puluses in the country.

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