New Delhi, Feb 1 (PTI) Congress leader Amitabh Dubey on Sunday claimed the Budget was just a series of “flashy announcements” and alleged that the Modi government’s policies had shaken investor confidence and led to a fall in the value of the rupee.
One has to be sceptical of the announcements, given the government’s past track record on implementation, he said.
Dubey, the in charge of research and monitoring in the party’s communications department, also slammed the government over the falling rupee and said there was a combination of reasons for it, one of them being that the faith of investors in India was down.
“The rupee is falling… It has been the fastest-falling Asian currency in the past year, and there’s a combination of reasons (behind it). One is that the faith of investors, obviously in India, is down. There are, of course, external reasons such as the US policies and so on, but the fact is that it’s not just the rupee that’s falling, the Indian investors, the Indian businessmen are fleeing the country,” he told PTI.
“Every year, 4,000 to 5,000 high-net-worth individuals take residency in Dubai, London and Singapore. Why is this happening? If the Indian growth story is so great, why are these people fleeing and moving their residency? And now they seem to be taking their money with them, because overseas direct investment is going out of India,” Dubey claimed.
Asserting that this “exodus” was not at all healthy, suggesting that something was missing in the Indian economy, Dubey said, “In my view, part of it is the atmosphere of fear that has come out. Now, if you are going to be raided by the ED, CBI, IT – recently a businessman committed suicide in Bengaluru because of such raids – how do you expect people to have faith in this economy and invest in it as promoters?” Talking about the Union Budget presented on Sunday, Dubey said, “Like always, there were many flashy announcements about the strategic sectors, about pharma, about big infrastructure projects… But the question is, what about the implementation of the previous announcements?” “There were several very flashy announcements, and as an Indian, I hope some of them will come through, but we are very sceptical, given the track record of the government,” the Congress leader said.
Dubey also attributed the low growth rate and the persistent unemployment situation to the government only making announcements but failing to implement them.
“This government has been relying solely on slogans from the beginning. First, they said that ‘Achche Din’ would come and that India would become a 5 trillion USD economy by 2022. What happened? “Now they are saying that India will become a developed nation by 2047. If this target is to be achieved, there should be a growth rate of at least 8 per cent every year,” Dubey said.
He also claimed that the economic growth rate the government talks about is based on fabricated figures. PTI ASK ARI
