Chidambaram: New idea

New Delhi, Dec. 1: Finance minister P. Chidambaram is in favour of re-visiting subsidies once in three to five years to ensure that the relief reaches the deserving sectors.

“We must re-visit subsidies once in three or five years to remove non-merit sectors and focus only on the deserving sectors,” the minister said today in a reply to a debate in the Rajya Sabha on the bill seeking supplementary grants worth Rs 33,290 crore.

However, Chidambaram clarified that subsidy on food, fertiliser and some fuels would continue.

“We are not reducing subsidy for the public distribution system (PDS). The budgeted provision was higher than the previous year .... And we have not increased the issue price of PDS or the ration system,” Chidambaram said.

In the meeting of the Planning Commission last month, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh had expressed concern over the mounting subsidy bill exceeding Rs 1,00,000 crore on food, fertilisers and petroleum.

After Chidambaram’s reply, the house cleared the Appropriation Bill on Supplementary Grants, already passed by the Lok Sabha.

Blaming the state governments for “corruption” in distribution of foodgrain through PDS, Chidambaram said an expert committee had found that only 36.38 per cent of the allocated foodgrain reached the poor and a chunk got lost through “ghost” ration cards.

Chidambaram also agreed that agricultural growth rate remained sluggish and hoped that it would be 4 per cent in the current fiscal.