Indian politicians spar over dodgy economic data as election nears
NEW DELHI: It may be the world’s sixth largest, but most other things about India’s economy are up for debate.
The ruling Bharatiya Janata Party ( BJP) is under fire for the release of new historical GDP figures that significantly downgraded growth during the years the opposition Congress party was in power, replacing old government estimates and those prepared by an independent committee.
The figures, released by the government’s Central Statistics Office ( CSO), showed growth in the 10 years of Congress rule to 2014 averaged 6.7 per cent, below an average of 7.4 per cent under the current government.
A previous government estimate had growth under Congress at 7.8 per cent.
P. Chidambaram, a former Congress finance minister, called the release “a joke”.
In response India’s current finance minister, the BJP’s Arun Jaitley, said the CSO was a credible organisation.
The fallout comes at a critical time for Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
India’s economy grew a weakerthanexpected 7.1 per cent in the July- September quarter, from a more than two-year high of 8.2 per cent in the previous quarter, government data showed on Friday.
Modi faces a general election next year, when the performance of the economy under his pro-business administration compared with the Congress era is likely to dominate campaigning.
The spat has also alarmed India’s top statisticians, who have long faced the difficult task of estimating growth and unemployment in an economy with hundreds of millions of informal workers, and dominated its financial press and political cartoons in recent days.
“The entire episode threatens to bring disrepute to India’s statistical services,” said an editorial in Mint, one of the country’s leading business newspapers, on Friday. — Reuters