Former Finance Minister and Congress leader P Chidambaram has taken a swipe at the BJP-led Central government, saying that the Indian economy is in “severe distress”. Chidambaram said that the BJP’s claims about a “robust Indian economy” are false as overseas investment has dropped by 31%.
The Congress leader said that foreign investors’ confidence in the Indian economy has declined.
“BJP claims that the Indian economy is in robust health in 2023-24, but has no explanation why net FDI inflows have dropped by 31 percent. FDI is a measure of the confidence that foreign investors have in a country, the government, and its policies. Such confidence has declined sharply in 2023-24,” Chidambaram wrote on the X platform.
Attacking further the BJP government, he said that foreign investors have realized the “wrong policies of the BJP and incompetent management of the Indian economy”.
Interest rates are high, real wages are stagnant, unemployment is rising and household consumption is falling, the Congress leader added.
Chidambaram said that the BJP government is either ignoring the distressing signs of the economy or does not understand them.
This week, the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) said that the country’s current account deficit declined to $10.5 billion or 1.2% of the GDP in the October-December quarter from $11.4 billion in the previous three months and $16.8 billion a year back.
The foreign direct investment recorded a net inflow of $4.2 billion, more than double of net inflow of $2 billion in Q3 of 2022-23, the RBI data added. Foreign portfolio investment recorded a net inflow of $12 billion in the quarter, higher than $4.6 billion a year back.
With Lok Sabha elections approaching, the political tussle has escalated, especially on the social media platforms. Yesterday Chidambaram attacked the BJP-led central government over Chief Economic Advisor V Anantha Nageswaran’s reported remarks that the government cannot solve all social and economic problems, and asserted that his party has a concrete plan to tackle unemployment which will be revealed in its manifesto.
In a post on X, former finance minister Chidambaram said, “The most startling confession has been made by the Chief Economic Adviser. He said that ‘Government cannot solve the problem of unemployment’. Shocking.”
“If that is the official stand of the BJP government, we must boldly tell the BJP ‘vacate your seat’,” he said.
