BJP opposes future trading in commodities

It may be a warning signal for the industrialists engaged in future trading of essential commodities.

In a major policy decision announced during a party rally in Agra on Sunday, the Bhartiya Janta Party (BJP) President Rajnath Singh indicated that if the BJP came into power after the next general elections, it would ban the operation of commodity exchanges as future trading in essential commodities had given rise to the present foodgrain crisis in the country.

According to Singh there was no logic in operating such exchanges that ran purely on speculation on the future produce of a particular crop and resulted in the sale of wheat, rice or potato crop even before it had been harvested, at prices higher than the prevailing prices which caused hoarding of the foodgrain at a time when it should be freely available in the market.

He said as a corrective measure, to rectify the mistakes made by the present Congress-led UPA government, the BJP had already included scraping down multi-commodity exchanges in its agenda.

He said, the public sector banks would be instructed to disburse loans to the farmers at 5 per cent interest rate and these declarations would be included in the policy document of the party.

He said under the present ruling government, the average annual income in Uttar Pradesh had fallen to a mere a quarter of the national standard when the state had 1/6th share in the country's population and if the state could achieve the national income standards it could give the entire country's economy a boost.