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Congress terms PM's economic talk as wishful thinking, suspects higher fiscal deficit

The Congress has described as unrealistic Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee's announcement at the Economic Advisory Council meeting on Thursday that the government has projected a target of 6.3 per cent growth in gross domestic product in the current year, and said ''instead of expressing wishful thinking, the government should come out with concrete measures to tackle the basic economic maladies.''

P party spokesperson Dr Girija Vyas told mediapersons, ''The target fixed is unrealistic and does not take note of the ground situation.''

Independent estimates have recently revised the growth rate at a mere 4.5 per cent which is lower than last year's 5.1 per cent actually achieved, she said.

Even the Confederation of Indian Industry while analysing the performance of a fairly representative number of corporate sectors indicated that the growth rate would be much lower, she said.

''There is no sign of either industrial revival or substantial exports growth for the current year. Assuming agriculture at its higher level of growth, it is extremely difficult to make up the deficiencies caused by slow industrial and export growth,'' she said.

Dr Vyas said one might generally agree with the prime minister on containing both fiscal deficit and spiralling inflation rate. But nothing had been suggested in terms of economic policies and programmes to reverse the lower growth and high inflation rate. By all accounts, it seems both fiscal and budgetary deficit are likely to be higher than projected in the budget, she said.

''With higher deficit continuing and inability of the government to manage the demand and supply, it does not augur well for achieving higher growth and reducing inflationary pressure,'' she said.

UNI