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Every third urban Indian jobless: Singh

MUMBAI:The Indian economy was slowing down instead of accelerating under PM Narendra Modi and there was no way it could touch $5 trillion, former PM Manmohan Singh said here today.

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Tribune News Service

Mumbai, October 17

The Indian economy was slowing down instead of accelerating under PM Narendra Modi and there was no way it could touch $5 trillion, former PM Manmohan Singh said here today.

Addressing the media while campaigning for the Maharashtra elections, Singh said the last five years had seen massive job losses  with businesses shutting down. He said the economy needed to grow at 10-12 per cent to become a $5-trillion economy by 2024 from $2.7 trillion in 2018. Instead of growth, it was showing signs of deceleration, he pointed out.

Referring to a statement by the International Monetary Fund that India’s growth rate in the current financial year would be only 6.1 per cent against 7.3 per cent estimated earlier, he said, “With the growth rate declining, I don’t see any hope of reaching the $5-trillion target by 2024.” 

Singh, credited with opening up Indian economy as Finance Minister in the 1990s, said every third person in urban India was jobless today. “Due to lack of jobs and opportunities, many people are forced to take up low-paying jobs,” Singh said. 

Asked what needed to be done to fix the economy, he said it would take him a lot of time to explain things. He, however, suggested the government should first diagnose what ailed the economy and then attempt to fix things. “This government has been in office for over five years. They should have learnt from our mistakes and provided credible solutions... they can’t keep claiming the fault lies with the UPA... this may score some debating points, but won’t offer any solution,” he said.

Singh refuted Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman’s criticism of the UPA government and former RBI Governor Raghuram Rajan for the NPAs of banks. “When I was in office, what happened did happen. But always passing buck is not enough,” he said.

The ex-PM went on to say that Mumbai and Maharashtra were facing the brunt of the economic slowdown with the maximum number of factory shutdowns being reported in the state in the last five years. “In the past, Maharashtra was number one in attracting investments, but now it is number one in farmer suicides,” he said.

Singh, who met a delegation of depositors from the troubled Punjab and Maharashtra Cooperative Bank, said the government must provide relief to the 16 lakh depositors. 

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