Lower growth is not an issue, says Modi

Hyderabad: Dismissing the concerns about the slowing down of the country’s economic growth, Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Wednesday said that “lower growth in one quarter was a non-issue” and that the “government is taking steps to improve it”.

Addressing a meeting of company secretaries, Mr Modi said, “It is not the first time that India’s GDP growth had fallen to 5.7 per cent. During the UPA governments, there were eight quarters when GDP growth was at or below 5.7 per cent.” 

This is the first time that the PM was responding to the growing debate on the slowing down of the economy after several people, including his partymen and those considered close to the RSS, red-flagged the government about the slowdown. “There are some people who sleep well, only after they spread a feeling of pessimism all around. We need to recognise such people,” he observed.

Won’t risk future for present: Modi
Mr Modi, however, said that the Indian economy was on a firm footing and that he will never jeopardise the country’s future for the present gains.

“The government is committed to reverse this trend. We are capable of that and are ready to take decisions,” the Prime Minister said, adding the decisions taken by the government will take India to a new growth trajectory.

Mr Modi said his critics were seeing slowdown in the last two quarters but were ignoring that the BJP government had brought down inflation from 10 per cent in the UPA regime to 2.5 per cent, shrunk current account deficit to near one per cent from four per cent and brought down fiscal deficit to 3.5 per cent from 4.5 per cent.

Defending his move to demonetise high-value currency notes, he said the note ban has affected the hoarders of black money and it proved that the country could be run on less cash. “Hoarding black money is not an easy task anymore,” he said.

He also said that he had asked the GST Council to identify bottlenecks and tech hurdles faced by small traders.