New Delhi: Launching another attack on PM Modi and the BJP, armed with relevant data on economy, the Congress has pushed the Centre to the corner, and scored a point over the ruling saffron party.
The Congress accused Modi of misleading the country and its citizens on the current state of affairs. He said, “Despite India’s GDP rate slipping to a six-year low of 5% in the April-June quarter, the Modi government still insists all is well with the India’s economy, and that it is one of the fastest growing in the world.”
“But, revised projections for the India’s GDP growth rates this year alone indicate otherwise. In fact, some analysts have dropped growth projections for 2019-20 from 7.5% to as low as 6%,” senior Cong leader Kapil Sibal told media at the party headquarters in New Delhi on Saturday.
Referring to various international organisations’ observations about the Indian economy, Sibal said the International Monetary Fund (IMF) on October 15 (last Tuesday) slashed India’s GDP projections to 6.1% from the 7% it forecast in July. Just after the World Bank cut India’s GDP growth for 2019- 20 to 6% from 6.8% earlier. Ditto with the Fitch Ratings, which in June 2019 cut India’s growth rate projections to 6.6% from 6.8%.
The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) cut its forecasts for India’s growth rate down to 5.9% in September 2019, a drop of 1.3% points from its previous projection in May. About the present condition of the Indian economy, Kapil Sibal said. “It is very disheartening that UN Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD), a UN trade agency, has projected India’s growth rate for 2019-20 at 6% from the last year’s 7.4%. Whereas On September 25, the Asian Development Bank (ADB) slashed India’s growth projection to 6.5% from 7% in July.
On October 1, Standard and Poor’s slashed India’s ratings, stating the country’s slowdown was “deeper and more broad-based” than what it expected. It projected India’s rate at 6.3%, a cut by 0.8 percentage points from its previous prediction for 2019-20. On Oct 10, the credit rating agency Moody’s Investors Service trimmed India’s growth rate down to 5.8% from 6.2% for 2019-20.
