Budget 2019: Government broke the back of high prices, says Piyush Goyal

Asserting that inflation is a hidden and unfair tax on the poor and middle class, Finance Minister Piyush Goyal on February 1 said the government has restrained the "back-breaking" inflation and brought it down to an average of 4.6 percent.

The average rate of inflation during 2009-2014 was a back-breaking 10.1 percent, Goyal said while presenting the Budget for 2019-20 in the Lok Sabha.

The then Prime Minister (Manmohan Singh) admitted as much when he had said, "We have also not been as successful in controlling persistent inflation as we would have wished. This is primarily because food inflation has increased," Goyal said. "In contrast, our government broke the back of back-breaking inflation. We brought down average inflation to 4.6 percent which is lower than the inflation during the tenure of any other government. In fact inflation in December 2018 was down to 2.19 percent only," the finance minister said.

He added that if his government had not controlled the inflation, Indian families would have ended up paying around 35-40 percent more on daily basic needs such as food, travel, consumer durables and housing.

The minister said India has contained the double-digit inflation despite generating a high growth rate.

"From being the 11th largest economy in the world in 2013-14, we are today the 6th largest in the world," he noted.

The Reserve Bank (RBI) has cut the retail inflation target (a key input to decide monetary policy) to 2.7-3.2 percent for the second half of the current fiscal ending March 2019 on expectations of a normal monsoon and moderate food prices.