India imported six times more oil from Russia to fight inflation, says Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman

Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman on Thursday said India ramped up its crude oil imports from Russia six times to tackle inflation, which has spiked globally due to supply hassles.

Addressing the ICRIER conference on “Taming Inflation”, Sitharaman said India increased oil imports from Russia to 12 percent from the earlier 2 percent odd.

Subsequently, the windfall tax imposed on exports has been revised downwards twice.  The tax on domestically produced crude oil has been reduced to Rs 13,000 per tonne from Rs 17,750 per tonne, while export taxes on jet fuel has been hiked to Rs 2 per litre from zero.

The Finance Minister also defended the export duties on iron and steel and said that the move was done with the logic of bringing prices down and "it has shown good results".

The government is now examining the proposal for calibrated reduction of export duty on steel, people in the know of the matter have told CNBC-TV18.

India has been focusing on manufacturing important across-industry goods like semiconductors in a bid to walk away from supply chain hassles and the FM said that "Aatmanirbhar Bharat is a powerful tool in managing supply chains which has a bearing on inflation."

Domestically speaking, agriculture inflation is an area of concern for the government as it is monsoon-dependent.

"Agri prices have always worried policymakers, and inflation obsession is focused on protecting the poor... Purely what is within India is the monsoon and vagary of the monsoon, which has kept us on our toes with respect to supply chains," she said.