NEW DELHI, Feb 3: Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh said on Saturday fighting inflation, which inched close to a two-year-high last week -- was a priority for his government.

“The prime minister said that the government was committed to reducing the rate of inflation through appropriate policy measures,” Singh told a meeting of the Economic Advisory Council that he chaired.

Singh “observed that while the global environment was currently conducive to sustaining India’s higher growth rate, it was necessary to ease domestic constraints on growth,” a statement from the prime minister’s office said.

On Friday, the government said inflation measured by the wholesale price index -- the most closely watched cost-of-living monitor -- accelerated to 6.11 per cent for the week ended January 20 from 5.95 per cent the previous week.

It is hovering above the 5.5 per cent tolerance limit set by India’s central Reserve Bank, which has been using a variety of tools to fight inflation since it began a tightening cycle in late 2004.

The government has cut customs duties on cooking oil, cement and other products in a bid to lower prices. Such efforts will take time to work, the Press Trust of India cited unnamed government officials as saying on Friday.

Rising prices of food including pulses, fruit, vegetables, eggs and sugarcane as well as textiles and wool, metals and paper spurred the headline inflation figure back above the six percent mark in the week to January 20.

India’s Congress-led government is mindful that rising costs can be political dynamite, particularly for an administration that came to power in May 2004 on a platform of helping improve standards for India’s poor masses.

India, Asia's fourth largest economy, grew by 9.1 per cent in the first half of the financial year while credit growth has been expanding by over 30 per cent annually.—AFP