Niti Aayog V-C Dismisses 10% GDP Growth Report Under Manmohan Govt, Says It Was 'Reckless Expansion'

New Delhi: Day after it was reported that the Indian economy had clocked a 10.08 percent growth rate in 2006-07 under the Manmohan Singh government, the highest since liberalisation of the economy in 1991, Niti Aayog V-C on Saturday took to Twitter to justify the growth seen in the past four years while also crediting “reckless expansion” for the figures of the earlier regime.

“Higher growth rate in 2009-2011 and in previous years was funded by untenable fiscal deficit and reckless expansion of commercial bank credit which was surely unsustainable. This led to a dramatic economic collapse and growth floundered spectacularly in last 3 years of UPA II,” tweeted Rajiv Kumar, Niti Aayog Vice-Chairman.

According to official data prepared by the Committee on Real Sector Statistics (constituted by the National Statistical Commission), the highest ever growth rate since Independence was recorded at 10.2 percent in 1988-89 when Rajiv Gandhi was the prime minister.

Kumar said on Saturday, “Likewise, highest ever growth rate during 1987-89 Rajiv Gandhi period was also debt funded and led to disastrous collapse of growth in 1990-92 and the unmitigated external account crisis that forced India to physically transfer its gold reserves to avoid a debt service default.”

The report was released on the website of the Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation (MOSPI).

The report compares growth rates between old series (2004-05) and new series based on 2011-12 prices.

Justifying growth seen under the current regime, Kumar wrote, “Growth rate under four years of Modi Government is still higher than the growth rate of last four years of UPA. This is being managed despite the pernicious legacy of massive NPAs, de-leveraging of commercial bank credit and an uncertain global trade environment.”

As per the old series (2004-05), the expansion in the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) at constant prices was 9.57 per cent during 2006-07, when Manmohan Singh was prime minister. As per the new series (2011-12), the growth number stands revised at 10.08 per cent.

This is the highest growth rate recorded by the country after launch of the economic liberalisation programme launched by then Prime Minister P V Narasimha Rao.

"The GDP backseries data is finally out. It proves that like-for-like, the economy under both UPA terms (10 year avg: 8.1%) outperformed the Modi Govt (Avg 7.3%), the Congress party said in a tweet on Friday.

"The UPA also delivered the ONLY instance of double digit annual growth in modern Indian history," it said.

The GDP numbers for the later years too have been revised upwards, according to the report.

The National Statistics Commission had set up the Committee to recommend suitable measures to strengthen systems and processes for collection, collation and dissemination of these statistics with possibility for improving timeliness.