JOIN USFormer finance minister and senior BJP leader Yashwant Sinha on Sunday has described current Finance Minister P Chidambaram as a habitual “spoiler”, who has destroyed a healthy economy inherited from the previous government three times in the last 18 years.
Chidambaram was has been finance minister thrice since 1996-97—first in the United Front government and then during the UPA regime. “Each time he was fortunate to receive a healthy economy from the previous government, and each time he brought the economic growth rate below 5 per cent,” said Sinha.
“On March 19, when Chidambaram declared that he would not contest the Lok Sabha polls, the BSE Sensex went up 125 points. The market was celebrating the fact that Chidambaram would not contest elections. The rupee has strengthened considerably against the dollar since then,” said the NDA-regime finance minister, known as a bitter critic of Chidambaram.
Citing several government statistics, he claimed Chidambaram did nothing to manage government expenditure and artificially contained the fiscal deficit. “The growth rate in the third quarter of 2013-14 was 4.7 per cent, which is the seventh consecutive quarter with below-5 pc growth,” said Sinha, posing 18 open questions to the finance minister.
He, however, praised Pranab Mukherjee, who was finance minister for two years before moving to the Rashtrapati Bhawan.