Kerala urges Centre to take steps to bring down price

Thiruvananthapuram, Jun 13 (UNI) Stating that changing the fiscal and monetary policies would not bring down the prices of essential commodities, Kerala Finance Minister T M Thomas Isaac today urged the Centre to take immediate steps in this regard.

Addressing newspersons here, he said, ''the Centre thinks that regulating the availability of money and reforming the customs duty will help to bring down the essential commodity price. But this is not a fact. The Centre should initiate strong steps to curtail the prices.'' On inflation, he said it had again increased, which showed the ''failure'' of the Centre's policies. ''The Centre should at least follow the Kerala Government's policies to bring down the prices,'' he said.

Kerala was procuring rice at Rs 10 per kilo from farmers in the state. It bought rice at Rs 14 per kilo from West Bengal and would sell it at Rs 16 to the people. Whereas the Food Corporation of India had said that they would supply rice at Rs 17 per kilo.

''Let the Centre procure rice from the states, which has surplus and supply it to the other states where there is a deficiency,'' he said.

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