New Delhi: As the prices of food items soar, the government on Monday said that the farm market is imperfect as it neither provides remunerative prices to the farmers nor fair prices to customers.
"Our agriculture markets are characterised by market
imperfections...a huge gap exists between the consumer price
and the price received by primary producers...While farmers do
not get (remunerative) prices, consumers end up paying more
than what should be paid if agriculture markets are
competitive and efficient," Finance Minister Pranab
Mukherjee said here.
There is a chain of intermediaries which do not always
work competitively in the agricultural markets, Mukherjee
told a CII seminar on 'competitive policy' in the Capital
today.
"There is tremendous scope of increasing competition in
the (farm) market to formulate policy changes and innovate
products which in turn would contribute to farmers as well as
consumers," he said, adding that despite low inflation food
prices have been on the rise.
On the sidelines of the same seminar, Cabinet
Secretary K M Chandrasekhar attributed the rising food prices
to supply constraints.
Mukherjee said it will be a challenge for Competition
Commission to locate and curb anti-competitive practices in
the system.
Bureau Report
First Published: Monday, November 16, 2009, 19:30