States asked to establish price monitoring Centres in all districts

The Centre on Friday directed all states to establish price monitoring centres in all districts.
Addressing a day-long workshop in Guwahati, organised in association with Government of Assam to address the issues c oncerning consumer protection in North Eastern States, Secretary Department of Consumer Affairs (DCA) Rohit Kumar Singh said that the Centre intended to achieve target of having 750 price monitoring centres by March 31, 2023 for which financial support will be assured.
Singh explained that through Price Monitoring Division, the Centre was making all efforts to control prices of essential commodities thereby, keeping check over inflation. He said DCA regularly generates data about price and has the system of collecting prices of 22 essential food commodities in the country.
Speaking about the domain of consumer protection, he underlined that infrastructure of commissions, human resource in consumer commissions and use of technology are three verticals through which the whole eco system of consumer protection is made robust and responsible.
Singh also assured that DCA will provide complete support to all State and District Commissions for having necessary infrastructure for effective functioning of consumer commissions as per the policy– 50% to be funded by State government and 50% by Central Government. For this, he requested all State governments to provide its Utilisation Certificates of previous year, if pending, without which centre cannot release the funds for subsequent year.