Since the RBI has released its first report depicting the data and figures after the demonetisation announced by Prime Minister Narendra Modi on 8 Nov 2016 the opposition is continuously attacking the BJP-led NDA government for its failure.
Congress has once again attacked the Modi government over demonetisation calling it a complete flop show and has now demanded a white paper on the economy and release GDP data of 10 years. On Friday during an official press conference AICC spokesperson Anand Sharma criticising the move of note ban said that demonetisation has dramatically dropped the GDP. He added that Congress had earlier warned the Prime Minister that the GDP is likely to decline but the Prime Minister along with BJP party President Amit Shah did not pay any heed to it.
Anand Sharma accused the government saying that had Modi listened to the advice of former Prime Minister and the renowned economist, Manmohan Singh, India would not have to face these crises now. “We had forewarned the Prime Minister and finance minister Arun Jaitley Ji that the GDP is going to decline sharply. Prime Minister and his finance minister had taken strong umbrage to that. The Prime Minister had not shown the respect to the experience of Manmohan Singh, the noted economist whose views are heard with respect by world leaders even today. Prime Minister thought that he has a better knowledge and understanding of economics,” he said.
After the release of the RBI report attacking the government, Congress has now demanded to release the GDP statistics of the past 10 years so that the people can be made aware of the extremely worrisome economic condition of the country.
The former commerce and industry minister claimed that the decline of 5.7% shown by the government is not right. He said that if the GDP is calculated according to the old methodology than the actual decline in the GDP is around 4.3% and 4.4%. Therefore Congress has demanded the GDP data of past 10 years to be calculated and released according to the old methodology. It also demanded the manufacturing and the IIP numbers as per the old series and the new series.
Further arguing putting up his point AICC spokesperson said that the public and private sector investment have suffered a sharp decline of 7%, the credit off-take is the lowest in 63 years, Gross Capital Formation has gone down in negatives and over 1/3rd of the existing industrial capacity is not utilised resulting in millions of job losses. He also held the government responsible for the loss of jobs many people have suffered due to demonetisation. He added that the unorganised sector had totally fallen down, which till now has not been able to build up again.
Referring to the financial crisis of 2008-09 of Portugal and Ireland Anand Sharma said that the Indian government is handling the bank’s recapitalisation and bad loans, which is over Rs 12 lakh crore in the same way Portugal and Ireland had done back in 2008-09. But he pointed out that the banks in those two countries were private sector banks but the banks in India were Public sector banks, hence adopting the same method will be a blowback to the government.