Govt. to convene NDC meeting soon to tackle inflation: PM

New Delhi, Mar 8 (UNI) Expressing concern over runaway inflation, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh today announced that the Centre would soon convene a meeting of the National Development Council (NDC) to devise strategies in consultation with states to check agricultural stagnation and inflationary trends.

''We are determined to bring inflation under control, and for this we will give special attention to the agricultural economy,'' Dr Singh said replying in the Rajya Sabha to the debate on the motion of thanks to the President for his Address to a joint session of Parliament.

Dr Singh said India was lucky that inflation had not become an ''accumulated problem as in some Latin American and African countries.'' In his nearly 50-minute reply, the Prime Minister assured that the challenge posed by inflation would be tackled without curbing the 'animal instinct' of entrepreneurs and industrialists in the country.

In this connection, he said the government had started taking measures which were bearing fruit. The UPA government, he said, had not raised the prices of foodgrains in the last three years despite an increase in the cost of petroleum products.

Dr Singh said water management was a prerequisite to checking inflation and appealed to the states to treat water as a national resource and resolve disputes connected with it in a peaceful manner.

On the controversial Special Economic Zone (SEZ) issue, he said whatever anomalies had crept into this scheme would be redressed.

A committee, headed by External Affairs Minister Pranab Mukherjee, had been constituted to go into the issue.

Later, the House adopted the Motion of Thanks after the members either withdrew their own amendments or the House negated them.

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