Senior Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leader and Leader of the Opposition in the Rajya Sabha, Arun Jaitley, today said the Union Budget 2010-11 would be highly inflationary and the duty hikes in petroleum products and service tax proposals would further stoke food inflation.Jaitley, who was speaking on a post-Budget meet organised by his party’s chartered accountants’ cell, said the Budget had not made an attempt to address the food shortage India was likely to face as agriculture acreage shrinks and population keeps growing.
‘‘The government is coming up with sham arguments on how to tackle food inflation,” he said. The service tax on rail freight will make everything costlier, which alone may give Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee more than Rs 8,000 crore. If crude prices go up, the government will earn more from oil as the duties on oil are levied ad valorem,” he said.
Criticising the sugar policy, he said India exported 4.8 million tonnes sugar at Rs 12.5 a kg and bought back the commodity at Rs 36 per kg. “The sugar policy can’t be handled by someone who owns or controls the largest number of sugar mills in the country. It’s a classic case of conflict of interest,’’ Jaitley said referring to Agriculture Minister Sharad Pawar.