New Delhi, Aug 19 (UNI) Countering Congress stance that the UPA delivered the highest decadal growth since Independence, Union Minister Arun Jaitley said on Sunday that India has been the fastest growing economy in the world for the last four years and has consistently overtaken China in the growth rate.
In a blog on social networking site Facebook, Mr Jaitley said in the global context all economies were growing during the boom years, which was not peculiar only to India. It slowed down after the boom years and thereafter, he said.
Earlier in the day, the Congress had defended the record of the United Progressive Alliance on the basis of recently published back series data on gross domestic product (GDP). Party leader and former finance minister P Chidambaram, in a press conference said the UPA delivered the highest decadal growth, 8.13 per cent at factor cost, since India acquired independence and handed over an Indian economy on the upswing in 2014.
Mr Jaitley said 'post 2014, when the global economy was in slowdown mode, it was India and India alone which has been the fastest growing economy in the world for the last four years and has consistently overtaken China in the growth rate,' he said.
Quoting overall fiscal deficit since 1999-2000, Mr Jaitley said economies should not spend recklessly beyond their means. If they do that, they leave the future generation in debt, he said, adding that in future years, instead of spending for growth, the economy would only be servicing the old debt.
'It would be noticed that from the period 2008 onwards, when the global boom ended, the UPA seriously compromised the fiscal discipline and increased the spending much more than the revenue,' he said.
The growth during UPA-1 was the period of the global boom. It inherited an 8 per cent plus growing economy from the NDA. The global tailwinds supported India, Mr Jaitley said.
'Emerging markets were all growing at a higher rates and when the challenge emerged, it compromised on all macro fundamentals. It compromised on the fiscal deficit and the Current Account Deficit, it allowed inflation to spiral out of control and more so to create an illusory growth, it compromised India’s banking system through reckless lending,' he said.
The policies of the UPA to promote growth led to macro instability thus producing a poor quality of growth, he said.
'The Current Account Balance was positive under NDA 1, went back to negative under UPA 1 and went all-time highs under UPA 2,' he said while quoting RBI data.
The Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation (MoSPI) on Sunday issued a clarification that the estimates in the Report are not 'official estimates' and are meant only to facilitate taking a decision on the appropriate approach.
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