Niti Aayog's new VC Rajiv Kumar denies note ban's effect on dipping GDP

New Delhi: Assuming office on Friday, Niti Aayog’s vice-chairman Rajiv Kumar said it was “absolutely” wrong to say that demonetisation was responsible for the slip in GDP in the first quarter of the year.

Kumar, who is a noted economist and holds a DPhil in economics from Oxford replaced Arvind Panagariya who resigned to return to academics.

After the Central Statistical Office released GDP data for the first quarter of the fiscal, experts and critics have been attributing the economic slowdown to Narendra Modi’s shock note ban in 2016. According to a report in The Hindu, Kumar reacted to the criticism by saying: “Old man in a bank queue during demonetisation told me why it made sense. Sometimes before you leap forward, you have to take 2-3 steps back”.

“I am fully confident that the July-September quarter will see 7 per cent to 7.5 per cent growth,” he added. He said that there is so much work in progress that the Q1 slowdown should be seen as “a mere blip before the next quarter”.

Re-iterating the words of Prime Minister Modi, Kumar stressed on the idea of co-operative federalism. “The idea of competitive, co-operative federalism will be realized by NITI by working closely with the States,” he said.

He said that job creation, entrepreneurship, agriculture, health and nutrition are key priorities to make development a ‘mass movement’ in India. “NITI Aayog will generate out of the box, transformational ideas to make India an economically advanced nation. It will create a platform where all stakeholders across sectors can work together towards India's development, he said.