Sinha asks UPA Govt to roll back oil price

Hyderabad, Oct 5 (UNI) With the crude oil falling sharply to about 95 USD per barrel in the International Market, the Bharatiya Janata Party(BJP) today urged the UPA government to immediately roll back the prices of petroleum products.

Addressing a press conference here, BJP Vice-President Yashwant Sinha said there was a strong case for reducing the prices of petroleum products, which were hiked after the crude oil price shot up to 145 US Dollar. The fall in prices of global commdoities would benefit India, which is a large importer of crude oil, he added.

Charging the Manmohan Singh Government with completely mismanaging the national economy leading to skyrocketing prices of essential commodities, he said the monetary measures were no answer to the present inflation which was fuelled by supply-side constraints.

The monetary measures would only result in economic slowdown in the country, he observed and claimed that the previous NDA government had given a thrust to infrastructure development to remove the ''supply-side constraints'' but the UPA government neglected infrastructure development, including the national highway improvement programme.

''I can say with a degree of confidence that I had kept price rise at strictest check during the NDA regime'', he claimed and said country's future Finance Minister would have a tough time to set right the situation as the present UPA government was spending ''off-the budget'' over five per cent of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) amounting to Rs 2,50,000 crore on oil, food and fertiliser subsidy and loan waiver.

''This Government will leave a huge unpaid bills of lakhs of crore of rupees to the next Government'', he claimed.

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