New Delhi: Under pressure over sluggish economic growth and poor foreign investment in key infrastructure sectors, Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Wednesday chose attack as the best defence and went hammer and tongs at the Opposition with a detailed account of the state of the economy, including a reduced fiscal deficit and reform measures that are institutionalising systemic honesty.
Armed with facts and figures to counter the rising clamour about the economy being in distress, Mr Modi said that a “handful of people” are trying to spread pessimism based on the slowdown in the last economic quarter.
Reiterating that the fundamentals of the Indian economy are strong and that economic growth is on track, Mr Modi assured a gathering of company secretaries that he was not one to risk the country’s future for short-term gains.
“I will not jeopardise the future of the country for my present gains,” he said, adding that decisions taken by his government will take India on a new growth trajectory.
Mr Modi also assured that his government will not hesitate to take decisions to reverse the downward trend if it continues. “Government is committed to reverse this trend... We are capable of that and ready to take decisions,” he said.
Breaking his silence on the country’s poor economic growth days after former finance minister and BJP leader Yashwant Sinha lambasted the fiscal policies of his government, Mr Modi said, “There are some people who sleep well only after they spread a feeling of pessimism. We need to recognise such people.”
Lamenting how some people were calling April-June growth of 5.7 per cent doomsday, he said, “India’s growth rate was below 5.7 per cent at least eight times in six years under the UPA government”.
Mr Modi, speaking for more than an hour on the occasion of golden jubilee celebrations of the Institute of Company Secretaries of India (ICSI) at New Delhi’s Vigyan Bhawan, repeatedly attacked the economic track record of the previous UPA regime, and said that critics were seeing slowdown in the last two quarters but were ignoring that the BJP government had brought down inflation from 10 per cent in the UPA regime to 2.5 per cent, shrunk Current Account Deficit to near 1 per cent from 4 per cent and brought down fiscal deficit to 3.5 per cent from 4.5 per cent.
The Prime Minister said there was a time when India was part of a group of countries called “fragile five” and the BJP government had pulled it out to make it the fastest growing economy for most part of its three-year rule.
Defending his government’s key decisions, the Prime Minister said that only his government had the guts to announce demonetisation, while introduction of the “good and simple tax or GST” was strengthening institutional honesty.
Addressing concerns over implementation of GST regime, the Prime Minister said that he has asked the GST Council to identify bottlenecks and technological hurdles faced by businesses, especially small and medium enterprises. The government, he said, is ready to make amends to help small traders.
Mr Modi, while being both cautious and aggressive in his speech, said that in policy and planning, care is being taken to ensure that savings accrue to the poor and the middle class, even as their lives change for the better.
The Prime Minister said that his government will remain focused on structural reforms and spoke of the 87 reform measures initiated across 21 sectors.
