NEW DELHI: Launching an attack on the Centre, former finance minister P Chidambaram said on Sunday that India saw the highest decadal growth rate since Independence during the tenures of the Congress-led United Progressive Alliance.
He said at a Press conference that the current government would not be able to match the average growth rate of UPA-1, and he hoped “for the sake of the country” that it would be able to catch up with the growth rate during UPA-2.
The former minister quoted from the back-series GDP data recently released by the Statistics Ministry. The average growth rate under the UPA-1 government was 8.87 per cent, and the figures corresponded to 10.08 per cent during 2006-07, said Chidambaram. During the UPA-2 tenure, the figure was 7.39 per cent, he said. He also said that 140 million people were lifted out of poverty during this period. “The three best years were 2005-06, 2006-07 and 2007-08. Dr Arvind Subramanian called them the boom years,” the former finance minister said.
The Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation released the data on its website on Friday.
The BJP spokesperson, Sambit Patra, meanwhile, said the data was not official and had not been accepted by the government yet. He accused the Congress of celebrating its “failures”.
“Inflation was rising and they were unable to check current account deficit, whereas under the Narendra Modi government, India has become one of the six largest economies in the world,” said Patra.
“Congress is a passionate advocate of high growth with equity and social justice. All three have suffered under the government of Narendra Modi,” Chidambaram said. The Congress leader said the primary reasons why the economy had suffered under the current regime were demonetisation and flawed implementation of the Goods and Services Tax.
The Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation has clarified that the Advisory Committee on National Accounts Statistics will deliberate on the back series estimates before finalising “the same for continuity, consistency and reliability”.