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New Delhi: Asserting the “Indian economy is resilient and will rebound in the times ahead based on consistent reforms that have ensured strong fundamentals through these difficult times”, Minister of State for Finance and Corporate Affairs Anurag Thakur on Wednesday hit back at ‘clueless’ Congress leader and former union finance minister P. Chidambaram over his criticism of the government with regard to the economic slowdown.
Stating he is not surprised that the former union finance minister “chose to ignore hard data and instead went ahead with whataboutery”, Thakur alleged the “Congress leadership has embodied this clueless approach over the years”.
The Union Minister said consistent reforms and strong fundamentals have ensured India had a swift rebound from a contraction of 24.4 % in the first quarter of fiscal year 2020-21 to a growth of 1.6 percent in the fourth quarter of fiscal year 2020-21.
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“While you doubt the resilience of Indian entrepreneurs, small businesses, traders and MSMEs to revive themselves; various international agencies project India to grow by 12.5% in FY 2021-22 making us the only major economy to have a projected double-digit growth,” he added.
Thakur further said India has “remained resilient” despite the “disruptions in the globalised world”.
“Is the Indian economy an island in isolation; have other major economies not faced a GDP contraction? Are you not aware that France, Germany, Italy, UK contracted by 8.2%, 4.9%, 8.9% and 9.9% respectively? Canada, Russia, South Africa, USA too have seen contraction in their GDP in the past year,” he asked.
The Union Minister also lashed out at Chidambaram on Twitter and while citing the Central Statistics Office’s graph posted “only an ostrich would deny this is not a V-shaped graph”.
Thakur’s outburst against Chidambaram came a day after Chidambaram lashed out at the government on the current GDP and said the fiscal year 2020-21 was “the darkest year of the economy in four decades”, which left “most Indians poorer than they were two years ago”.
“2020/21 has been the darkest year of the economy in four decades. The performance in the four quarters tells the story… the first two witnessed a recession (-24.4 and -7.4 per cent)… performance in the third and fourth quarters did not herald a recovery,” he said.
The former union finance minister’s remarks came as the GDP numbers released earlier on Monday showed the Indian economy had contracted by 7.3 percent over the fiscal year 2020-21.
Advising the government to “act boldly, borrow or print money and spend”, Chidambaram said: “This is not the time to worry about the fiscal deficit. So what if the deficit widens to 6.5%? We can’t lose another year like we lost the last year. But the way the government is reacting, we are going to lose another year.”
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