ONE YEAR OF NOTE BAN
AMN
Congress Vice-President Rahul Gandhi has written an article on the global and Indian economic situation in today’s edition of The Financial Times.
“The prime minister claimed his decision was aimed at wiping out corruption. Twelve months on the only thing he has wiped out is confidence in our once booming economy,” he has said in the article.
He said that demonetisation has wiped out 2 percent of the country’s GDP apart from destroying the informal labour sector and many SMEs.
“It has ruined the lives of millions of hard-working Indians,” wrote Gandhi.
Demonetisation has wiped out 2 per cent of India’s gross domestic product, destroyed the informal labour sector and has wiped out many small and medium businesses. It has ruined the lives of millions of hard-working Indians. The Centre for Monitoring Indian Economy has calculated that over 1.5m people lost their jobs in the first four months of 2017 due to demonetisation.
— Rahul Gandhi in the ‘Financial Times’
The Congress leader also criticised the government’s poor implementation of the Goods and Services Tax and termed it a modern day ‘Licence Raj’. “Bureaucratic and complex, it has devastated livelihoods, creating a modern day ‘Licence Raj’ that imposes rigid controls and gives vast powers to government officials.”
Gandhi said micro, small and medium businesses could meet the job challenge posed by China, which, he said, account for close to a quarter of the world’s goods by output value.