Defending against criticism of an economy that is grinding slowly under the Narendra Modi led government this year, BJP president Amit Shah, defended his government’s position saying the present pain points in the economy are in the long term good, and it should not be evaluated as right and wrong for the short term.
In 2014, Prime Minister Narendra Modi had stated to achieve important economic goals like creation of one lakh new jobs every year, doubling of farmers income and others for a 2022 deadline in his pre-poll campaigns. But on Saturday, addressing business leaders in FICCI, the BJP president set a new deadline. He said, that most economic decisions being taken now, will transform India’s economy by its 100th year of independence in 2047.
“Modi government has a 30-year policy direction for India. His decisions are taken for long term benefits rather than short term,” said Shah, deemed the most important powerful Indian after PM Narendra Modi. Addressing top corporates today, Shah urged them to look ahead rather than dwell over short term pains.
Earlier, while Shah was interacting with leading business house leaders privately, he heard complaints on the government’s demonetisation move and some other criticisms, including the running of the railways. On the dais, Shah took note of the demonetisation issue and said that his party has envisioned to multiply India’s GDP many times over by 2047. “There are many criticisms but one thing you all will have to agree is that all this has led to greater formalisation of the economy.”
“BJP has changed the government’s approach to GDP. We have included smaller infrastructure developments like toilets and rural electrification to it,” Shah said. The BJP president also reiterated the government’s commitment to electrify 18,000 targeted villages by May, 2018, and completing rural electrification for all villages in the country by 2022.
Highlighting on the government’s success in opening of zero balance Jan Dhan accounts for the economically weaker population, Shah said that more than 30 crore such accounts were opened. He said disbursements under the Direct Benefit Transfer (DBT) scheme had resulted in savings to the exchequer of an amount of Rs 59,000 crore.
“Such a large corruption in disbursement of subsidies, which not even the CAG could ever detect,” Shah said, highlighting that the Modi government had enrolled 36 crore beneficiaries, who receive government subsidies and entitlements directly to their bank accounts.
Shah also credited the Modi administration for creation of Niti Aayog and its policy directions in the last three years, saying: “Niti Aayog has qualitatively improved on the federal structure of the country.”
On implementation of GST, Shah said that Modi and the BJP administration in government had the courage to take such an important decision. “We not only had dialogue but also received consent from each and every state for GST.”
Talking on the need for the unified indirect tax regime, Shah said, economic development was not uniform among producer states of western India and consuming states of eastern India, and this had ailed the Indian economy right after independence.
“Richer states could afford giving tax breaks to industries and industries thus showed little interest to invest in the eastern part of the country. GST will remove this disparity,” he said.
On bank NPAs, Shah said the increase in NPAs in the present regime, from Rs 5 lakh crore to Rs 8.6 crore, was due to the Modi government’s initiative to clean-up bank’s balance sheet. “Earlier NPAs were being hidden inside the jugglery of balance sheets, we have forced banks to declare it. Hiding the disease will not cure it,” he said.
“Taking this stern step on NPAs have caused some difficulties, we will discuss with you (industrialists) to find a resolution to this problem as well,” Shah promised. Corporates have faced difficulties after the implementation of the bankruptcy law, which banks can initiate to recover their long pending dues.
Calling himself a student of numbers, from an early age of 13 years, Shah belted statistics regarding his government’s development projects for the corporate gathering at FICCI.
He said speed of road construction has doubled from 69 km per day to 133 km per day now. Speed of road construction achieved by the government stood at 22 km per day till last year. This fiscal, in the first few months it has touched nearly 30 km per day. Road and transport minister Nitin Gatdkari had earlier said that the ambitious 40 km per day target set initially could only be met this year.
Without referring to the recent train accidents, Shah said, the speed of new railway tracks being constructed in the country stood at 7.9 km per day―nearly double the speed of laying railway tracks in 2013-14. He said in 2013-14 the speed of laying optical fibre cables was only 358 km per day. “In 2017 alone, we have laid more than 200,000 km of optical fibre cables,” Shah recounted.
He said, foreign investment rules have been eased and the Foreign Investment Promotion Board (FIPB) have been done without, under the Modi government. Investments, thus jumped from $ 3.7 billion in 2013-14 to $ 6.3 billion now.
On GDP numbers, Shah said that barring the numbers for last month, which were at a four year low of 5.7 per cent, the BJP government led by Narendra Modi had clocked growth of 7.1 per cent.
He said, steps to back new entrepreneurs were also taken by the NDA government under leadership of Modi, and going ahead, new jobs will be created. Taking note of labour ministry survey numbers, the Economic Survey 2017, part-1 had deduced that 5 per cent of India’s labour force were unemployed in 2016-17, a slight improvement over 4.9 per cent unemployment noted during 2013-14.
“Creating new jobs is a major challenge for the government. And it is the most important consideration for a younger India,” Harshvardhan Neotia, chairman of the Kolkata-based Ambuja Neotia Group and immediate past president of FICCI told the BJP party president.
“I am certain that the Indian economy will grow many times by 2030. We want to move ahead of reforms to bring in absolute transformation of the Indian economy,” said Shah. Though this was meant to be an interactive session between the BJP party president and corporates, Shah only presented his hour-long monologue and left without giving business leaders the chance to ask him any questions during the session at FICCI.
