With the prices of essential food items shooting up, the Centre on Tuesday unveiled measures to tame inflation by asking the State Governments to crack down on hoarders and de-list items such as onions and potatoes on which a minimum export price was slapped to discourage exports.
The steps were disclosed by Finance Minister Arun Jaitley after a high-level meeting in which Agriculture Minister Radha Mohan Singh, Food Minister Ram Vilas Paswan, Commerce Minister Nirmala Sitharaman and top officials including Nripendra Misra, Principal Secretary to Prime Minister Narendra Modi, were present.
Maintaining that only four or five commodities have witnessed a spike in prices, the Finance Minister said States have been asked to crack down on hoarders who are trying to exploit apprehensions of a weak monsoon.