NDA failed to deliver on poll planks, Congress says in its state of economy report
Congress claimed that the Bharatiya Janata Party-led NDA has failed to deliver its electoral promise of creating new jobs and reviving investments
New Delhi: A day ahead of the presentation of the Economic Survey by the government, the opposition Congress on Monday said that the state of the Indian economy is worrisome. In a report on the state of the Indian economy, the Congress claimed that the Bharatiya Janata Party-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA) has failed to deliver its electoral promise of creating new jobs and reviving investments. It also said that demonetisation of high-value currency has further hurt the Indian economy, leading to large-scale job losses and decline in new investment proposals.
“India appears to be caught in a progressive downward jobs spiral; investments appear to be unresponsive to the call to “Make in India"; and infrastructure is improving far too slowly to have a multiplier effect. In this stressed environment, the government’s sudden move to demonetise 86% of outstanding Indian currency on 8th November, 2016, appears to have further impacted the possibilities of economic revival. The reality is that we seem to be crashing from high hopes of a ‘demographic dividend’ towards a ‘demographic disaster,"’ the report said. The report claimed that rural distress has increased in the aftermath of demonetisation.
In a press conference addressed by former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and former finance minister P. Chidambaram, the party questioned NDA’s performance.
“The first and most important question is where are the jobs? The second question is where is new capital investment? The third question is how are businesses being helped to grow and expand and employ more people," said Chidambaram. Singh also flagged the downward revision in the growth projections of the Indian economy by international agencies.
“That the Indian economy is not in a good shape is obvious. Even the International Monetary Fund (IMF) has projected that the growth rate of India in the current fiscal year will not be 7.6% but less than 6.6%," he said. The Indian economy grew 7.6% in 2015-16. Rebutting the Congress’s charges, two Union ministers Piyush Goyal and Nirmala Sitharaman defended the government’s performance, citing a revamp of the railways, increased allocations to the rural job guarantee scheme and the sharp fall in inflation, in a joint press conference.
“Congress is trying to compare its 10 years’ performance to two-and-a-half years of NDA," Sitharaman said.
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