INSUBCONTINENT EXCLUSIVE:
poor and middle class, Finance Minister Piyush Goyal on Friday said the government has restrained the "back-breaking" inflation and brought
it down to an average of 4.6 per cent.The average rate of inflation during 2009-2014 was a back-breaking10.1 per cent, Mr Goyal said while
presenting the Budget for 2019-20 in the Lok Sabha.The then Prime Minister (Manmohan Singh) admitted as much when he had said, "We have also
not been as successful in controlling persistent inflation as we would have wished
This is primarily because food inflation has increased," Mr Goyal said."In contrast, our government broke the back of back-breaking
We brought down average inflation to 4.6 per cent which is lower than the inflation during the tenure of any other government
In fact inflation in December 2018 was down to 2.19 per cent only," the finance minister said.He added that if his government had not
controlled the inflation, Indian families would have ended up paying around 35-40 per cent more on daily basic needs such as food, travel,
consumer durables and housing.The minister said India has contained the double-digit inflation despite generating a high growth rate."From
being the 11th largest economy in the world in 2013-14, we are today the 6th largest in the world," he noted.The Reserve Bank (RBI) has cut
the retail inflation target (a key input to decide monetary policy) to 2.7-3.2 per cent for the second half of the current fiscal ending
March 2019 on expectations of a normal monsoon and moderate food prices.RBI's six-member Monetary Policy Committee is scheduled to meet
between February 4-6 to announce its concluding bi-monthly monetary policy for the current fiscal.(This story has not been edited by
TheIndianSubcontinent staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)Find LIVE Budget 2019, updates, latest news, videos, key
highlights, reactions, tax and policy changes here
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