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Duty waiver on edible oil imports a big blow: VS

THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: Kerala Chief Minister V.S. Achuthanandan said here on Tuesday that the Union government’s decision to withdraw import duty on edible oils would be a big blow to Kerala, as it would bring down the price of coconut, a major farm produce of the State.

In a press release, the Chief Minister said inflation and rise in prices of essential commodities were a result of the wrong policies pursued by the Union government. The imperialistic forces behind globalisation had an agenda of destroying the primary production sectors in developing nations so that they could expand the market for their products. India had surrendered to the designs of the imperialistic forces, he said.

The growth in agriculture production in the country in the recent years had been hardly a fourth of the overall growth in the economy. Farmers had little incentive to increase production, as they could not get remunerative prices for their produce. In fact, scarcity of edible oils being experienced in the country was not because of natural reasons. The scarcity was engineered by policy interventions, he alleged.

He noted that the Union government had reduced the import duty on unrefined palm oil and other edible oils from 45 per cent to 20 per cent hardly 10 days ago. The import duty on refined palm oil was also brought down then from 52.5 per cent to 27.5 per cent. And on Monday, the Union government decided to withdraw the import duty on unrefined palm oil and other edible oils completely, besides reducing the duty on refined palm oil further to the level of 7.5 per cent. It should be noted that edible oils carried an import duty of 99.4 per cent about one-and-a-half years ago.

Mr. Achuthanandan said the right way to contain the prices of essential commodities was to strengthen the public distribution system.

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