NEW DELHI: Finance Minister Arun Jaitley on Friday trashed the Opposition’s allegations of mismanagement of the economy in the Rajya Sabha citing data during the NDA regime vis-a-vis the UPA Government.
Replying to a discussion on the Budget in the Upper House, Jaitley said the NDA Government has continued with the two major social sector schemes of the UPA era---MGNREGA and Food Security Act and has even exceeded the expenditure in contrast to the budgetary outlay. During the UPA, the allocation of about Rs 40,000 crore for MGNREGA was not even fully utilised.
While the expenditure exceeded to Rs 55,000 crore as against a budgetary outlay of Rs 48,000 crore for MGNREGA in the last fiscal, the Government has allocated Rs 1.7 lakh crore for implementation of the Food Security Act in the budget for 2018-19.
The minister said as against fiscal deficit of 5.9 per cent (2011-12), 4.9 per cent (2012-13) and 4.5 per cent (2013-14), the NDA Government maintained a deficit of 4.1 per cent (2014-15), 3.9 per cent (2015-16) and 3.5 per cent in 2016-17 and 2017-18.
He also cited the Revenue deficit to buttress the NDA government’s performance to counter the Opposition’s allegations of fiscal imprudence. He said as against “unacceptable” revenue deficit of 4.9 per cent (2011-12), 3.7 per cent (2012-13) and 3.2 per cent (2013-14) during the UPA’s last three years, the NDA Government has maintained revenue deficit of 2.9 per cent, 2.5 per cent and 2.1 per cent after it assumed power in 2014.
On inflation, Jaitley said the last three years of UPA government recorded inflation rate of 9.4 per cent (2011-12), 10.4 per cent (2012-13) and 9 per cent (2013-14) as against 2.5 to 3 per cent after it came to power in 2014. In the ongoing fiscal, the inflation was 3.6 per cent because of the implementation of GST.