NEW DELHI: Congress leader and former Finance Minister P Chidambaram on Monday said the economy is stuck in a groove due to fiscal mismanagement by the Narendra Modi government.
Maintaining that there is no international pressure on India, he said none of the promises of the Modi government materialised in 2015.
Addressing a press conference at the Congress headquarters here, Chidambaram blamed the for the GST Bill not taking off, adding that the government failed to provide any written formulations on the three principal objections raised by the Congress following Modis meeting with party president Sonia Gandhi and former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh about a month ago.
We have not yet received the written response of the government or the revised formulations on the three principal objections.
So, the ball is entirely in the governments court. It is for them to come back to us and tell us whether they are accepting our objections, whether they are revising the formula, whether they are amending the particular section, he said.
Chidambaram said his notes on the GST files were not carved on stone. The BJP opposed the GST for several years, why have they changed their position today? So, these are evolving positions. We are not discussing the GST Bill introduced by Pranab Mukherjee. We are discussing the GST introduced by the present government.
On that Bill, we have stated our objections and, let me remind you, that two of those three objections have been virtually endorsed by (Chief Economic Advisor) Arvind Subramaniam. So, let us have the formulation in writing, the former Finance Minister said.
He denied the BJPs allegation that the Congress acted as an obstructionist opposition party.
Our opposition to the governments wrong policies or poorly-drafted laws or ill-conceived schemes or acts of misconduct or misuse of government agencies cannot be termed obstructionism.
Let me remind everyone that we have cooperated with the government in passing 67 and 45 Bills in the Lok Sabha and the Rajya Sabha, respectively, during the past 19 months, he added.
On the governments claims about improving ease of doing business, Chidambaram said the Mid-Year Economic Review said private investment was languishing.
Credit growth is slowest in 20 years. Actually, credit to major enterprises, which creates jobs, has shrunk 9.1 per cent.
So, I cannot say from the evidence that we have, that on the ease of doing business, things have improved.
I must have hard data to come to that conclusion, he said.
Revenue figures
When asked about Finance Minister Arun Jaitleys recent statement that revenue figures say that the economy is doing well, Chidambaram said he would wait for the final revenue figures. I thought today the Revenue Secretary admitted that taken together, there will be a net shortfall of about `30,000-40,000 crore.
Now, that is after additional taxation on the oil side. They have not passed on the entire price reduction to the consumer. They have taxed a large part of it. For net of that, one has to see if the revenue performance is as good as the estimates, but I would be happy if they achieve their revenue target he said.
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