UPA had 10 years to complete reforms of 1991, but it didn’t: Nirmala

There was an opportunity for former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to finish the incomplete reforms of 1991 during the 10-year rule of UPA from 2004-2014, but no reforms were carried out, she said.

“…The promised reforms of 1991 were not completed at that time. Subsequently, when there was an opportunity (for UPA) again between 2004 and 2014, no reforms (took place),” she said.

Sitharaman said the present government has operated on “two rails” in the last 10 years, which has helped the economy to reach the “fifth (largest) position”. “It will reach the third (largest) position in the coming years,” she said.

Citing a Tamil idiom, she said the economy was like a piece of cloth on a thorny bush; malpractices tore into the economy. “…How do you extricate the cloth from the bush without causing any damage? …The whole world was using the phrase ‘fragile five’ for us. What was the level of fragility? From the bottom, you were in the first five,” she said.

Sitharaman said inflation in the last year of Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee-led NDA government was below 4 per cent. “Their (UPA’s) ill-targeted, reckless fiscal policy, ill-targeted subsidies and wasteful expenditure, all done for political gains, pushed the inflation during the UPA rule,” she said, adding that the average annual inflation rate under UPA was 8.2 per cent.

Citing former PM Manmohan Singh’s remarks during AICC session in Jaipur in 2013, Sitharaman said he had admitted that handling inflation was a shortcoming of the UPA government.

The government has taken several measures to manage inflation. In the last nine years of the Modi government, retail inflation has been mostly around 5 per cent, and it has never crossed 8 per cent, she said. “And that Congress is lecturing us now on how to manage inflation,” Sitharaman said.

In a reference to the erstwhile National Advisory Council headed by Sonia Gandhi, the Finance Minister said India needs a “clean and accountable governance and not governance through an extra-constitutional body”.

She also said the UPA regime was marked by delays in implementation of projects. PM Modi personally monitors programmes and projects and their progress through the PRAGATI portal by holding videoconferences with officers even at the district level, she said.

Giving reasons for coming out with the White Paper now, Sitharaman said a similar exercise earlier would have impacted the confidence of institutions, investors, and the people. As an elected government, she said, it is imperative to inform the public and Parliament about the true picture of the economy during the UPA regime and the efforts taken by the Modi government to revive the economy.