Jaitley cites IMF reports for economy under NDA

Union Finance Minister Arun Jaitley on Sunday cited two IMF reports of 2014 and 2018 to buttress the claim that India has moved a long way in the four years of the NDA government.

In his latest Facebook post, Jaitley said that India has moved from high inflation, high fiscal and current account deficit, a standstill infrastructure and power sector in 2014 during the UPA regime to a substantially cleaned up and transparent system that has seen a series of reforms and easier decision making in 2018.

The key issues that IMF flagged in 2014 were That India's economic growth could slow to 4.6, the lowest level in a decade, reflecting global developments and domestic supply constraints.

“Headline retail inflation is expected to remain near double digits for the remainder of the fiscal year. The current account deficit is narrowing, driven by a significant improvement in exports, robust remittances flows, and a rapid diminution of gold imports. Nonetheless, India has very little room to adopt countercyclical policies, constrained by persistently-high inflation, and sizeable fiscal and external imbalances. Spillovers from renewed external pressures interacting with domestic vulnerabilities are the principal risks,” Jaitley said quoting the IMF.

On the contrary, the finance minister said the IMF in 2018 in its report said that stability-oriented macroeconomic policies and progress on structural reforms continued to bear fruit... The near-term macroeconomic outlook is broadly favourable. Growth is forecast to rise to 7.3% in 2018-19 and 7.5% in FY2019-20, on strengthening investment and robust private consumption...

“An analysis of what the IMF had to say in 2014 as against 2018 is very clear- high inflation, high fiscal deficit, high current account deficit, a standstill infrastructure, power sector, allocation of natural resources. We have come a long way.

“The last four years have seen a series of reforms, both legislative and otherwise, which have been carried at by the government. The system have been substantially cleaned up and made more transparent. Decisiveness has led to easier decision making and made the economy stand out before several other countries,” Jaitley said.