The Finance Minister, Mr Pranab Mukherjee, has said that he would be happy if inflation could be maintained at 6.5 per cent throughout this year, given the constraints.
Policymakers have been struggling to get a handle over inflation given the rise in global crude oil prices in the recent years.
After hovering around 9 per cent in the first two quarters of the current fiscal, the wholesale price index based inflation had been showing a softening trend from October this fiscal. It had gone up to 6.95 per cent in February from a little over 6 per cent in January.
It would have been ideal if inflation rate was 3-4 per cent, Mr Mukherjee told Rajya Sabha on Wednesday. The Finance Minister, however, mainatined that he was not advocating that range.