Congress: Narendra Modi government has pushed economy in dire straits

Narendra Modi

The Congress on Sunday said that the Narendra Modi government had upturned a rising economy and left it in "dire straits" with its "ad hoc and myopic economic policies". "Dear Arun Jaitley, Congress governments (2004-2104) delivered the highest decadal growth of 8.13 per cent at factor-cost since Independence. Under Modi government, GDP growth in 2017-18 is just 6.7 per cent, which is a four-year low. In July 2018, IMF itself lowered our growth projections," Congress Spokesman Randeep Singh Surjewala said in a series of tweets.

"Jaitley ji should know that Modi government had inherited an economy that was on the upswing. But due to BJP's ad hoc and myopic economic policies -- demonetisation, flawed implementation of GST and tax terrorism -- that momentum was lost," he added. Surjewala's tweets came in response to a post on social media by Finance Minister Arun Jaitley who said that it was only with NDA coming to power in 2014 that the economy had undergone a transformational change.

In his post, Jaitley said that a comparison of the data released in 2014 and 2018 proved that high inflation, fiscal deficit and current account deficit, besides a standstill in the infrastructure and power sectors, as well as in allocation of natural resources, were some of the failures of the previous UPA government.

"We have come a long way. The last four years have seen a series of reforms, both legislative and otherwise, which have been carried on by the government. The system has been substantially cleaned up and made more transparent," Jaitley posted on Facebook. However, Surjewala said that certain parameters showed a downward trend in economy and that "no amount of whitewashing" could change those facts.

"Gross Fixed Capital Formation as a percentage of GDP was 34.3 per cent in 2011-12. Even in 2013-14 it was 31.3 per cent. In the last three years, it has remained constant at 28.5 per cent and has impacted growth. No amount of white washing or blog writing can increase that," Surjewala said. He said that the manner in which the Modi government had sought to "supress the 'back series' of GDP" and attempted to "distort" them through "spins", was now out in the open.

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