PM sets up team to manage prices

NEW DELHI: With BJP finally zeroing in on rising prices and high inflation rate as issues on which to pin down the UPA government as being detrimental for the aam aadmi, PM Manmohan Singh has set up a crisis management team to monitor the situation on a daily basis.
Apart from the PM, its other members are FM P Chidambaram, Planning Commission deputy chairperson Montek Singh Ahlu-walia and RBI governor Y Venugopal Reddy.
This is apart from the Cabinet Committee on Prices, which was set up last week and which met for the first time on Thursday evening.
The NDA government did not have a CCP as there was no requirement for it. Apart from the PM, the FM, defence minister Pranab Mukherjee, food and agriculture minister Sharad Pawar, commerce minister Kamal Nath, the CCP also has chemicals and fertilisers minister Ramvilas Paswan, railway minister Lalu Prasad and IT minister Dayanidhi Maran, with Ahlu-walia as a special invitee.
The preponderance of non-Congress ministers in the panel was part of the PM''s effort to broadbase it to help with internal "political management".
According to sources, the PM felt his biggest task was economic management and was, therefore, concentrating his energies on that.
He was confident the current rate of inflation would taper off within a month, with the cut on duties on import of refined petrol, increased foodstocks and a good forex position.