Congress leader Rahul Gandhi on Friday attacked the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA) government over the International Monetary Fund’s (IMF) projection of India’s gross domestic product (GDP) during this fiscal year amid the coronavirus disease. Gandhi’s taunt featured neighbouring countries like Pakistan and Afghanistan, a day after he had picked Bangladesh’s example to launch the jibe.
Referring to IMF’s estimates on Tuesday, Gandhi termed it the BJP government’s “solid achievement.” “Another solid achievement by the BJP government. Even Pakistan and Afghanistan handled Covid better than India,” the former Congress president tweeted and shared a graph with IMF’s projections for several countries.
While Pakistan and Afghanistan are expected to experience a dip of 0.40% and 5% in their GDP growth this fiscal, India’s GDP is likely to shrink by 10.3%, the biggest slump of any major emerging nation and the worst since Independence. This points to a downwards revision from the IMF’s previous prediction in June when it said output would decline 4.5% while in April it had said the economy would expect a growth of 1.9%.
However, the government had downplayed IMF projections, saying the per capita GDP has increased from Rs 83,091 in 2014-15 to Rs 1,08,620 in 2019-20, which points to an increase of 30.7%, according to news agency PTI.
On Wednesday too, Gandhi had slammed the government. “Solid achievement of 6 years of BJP’s hate-filled cultural nationalism: Bangladesh set to overtake India,” he had tweeted.
The claim was countered by the government, which said India’s GDP is 11 times that of Bangladesh in 2019.
The IMF expects India to grow 8.8% next year. The international body has also warned that the global economy’s recovery is tentative and uneven and “marked by significant uncertainty” as the coronavirus disease caseload continues to increase across several nations.
