Finance Minister Arun Jaitley on Thursday said the Opposition, mainly the Congress, has lost its credibility by questioning the latest GDP figures which do India proud by placing the economy as the highest growing for the third year running.
He added that as a result of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s pro-poor policies such as demonetisation, the ruling BJP has gained in popularity and established its political primacy, which will reflect in the results of the ongoing Assembly elections in five States.
“It is a proud moment for India that for three years, we are the fastest growing economy in the world. During the post-demonetisation period, some people calculated that the economy will slow down and remonetisation will take time.
“It is now proven that these fears were greatly exaggerated and some myths were created largely for political purposes,” said the Finance Minister, who was here for an election rally.
The Central Statistics Office (CSO) has released GDP figures for the third quarter, which show that the economy grew at a relatively strong 7 per cent. The government has asserted that the impact of demonetisation has been taken into account and — unlike what the Congress is suggesting — agricultural growth was at an all-time high.
“In November and December, the economy grew 7.5 per cent. It proved that our aim that the formal economy should expand and parallel economy should be brought into the mainstream was met. The Congress is clearly not happy with the situation,” said Jaitley.
The CSO has said in its second advance estimates that the full year’s GDP growth will remain unchanged at 7.1 per cent.
With the Q3 numbers, the manufacturing sector grew 8.3 per cent faster than the 6.9 per cent registered in Q2.
The agriculture sector witnessed a growth of 6 per cent in Q3 as compared to 3.8 per cent in Q2.
The Congress has asserted that the new GDP numbers are “highly suspect”. Veteran party leader and former Commerce Minister Anand Sharma said the CSO has not factored in the adverse impact of demonetisation, including job losses and rural distress, while calculating the numbers. The Congress’s criticism of the government’s handling of the economy has largely been informed by former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s critique of demonetisation.
“The way the scheme (demonetisation) has been implemented will hurt agricultural growth in our country, it will hurt small industry, will hurt all those people who are in the informal sector of the economy. And my own feeling is that the national income, that is the GDP, can decline by about 2 per cent as a result of what has been done,” Singh, who is also a noted economist, had told Parliament.
Political propagandaNow that the new GDP figures actually show a jump in agricultural growth, Jaitley dismissed the criticism as a “myth and political propaganda”. “It is irresponsible to question the CSO’s professionalism as the Congress has done. For the Congress to go into mourning after the country has registered impressive growth numbers is just unfortunate,” he said.