Losing Battle

Losing Battle THE index of wholesale prices has risen by 2.3 per cent in the fortnight following the presentation of the budget for 1991-92 and the annual rate of inflation, as measured by the price index for the week ended August 3, has gone up to 12,9 per cent. Control of inflationary pressures in the economy is ostensibly a major objective of the government's economic policies and, towards that end, reduction of the budgetary gap, whether denoted by the conventional concept of deficit financing or by the IMF-World Bank favoured, ideologically-weighted concept of the fiscal deficit, was the principal, in fact almost the sole, focus of the budgetary sums unveiled by the finance minister in parliament on July 24. But already the many contradictions in the government's efforts to bring inflation under control are beginning to be exposed.