New Delhi:
Dr Arvind Panagariya, Chairman of the 16th Finance Commission, told NewsDeskReport that Prime Minister Narendra Modi had inherited a very fragile economy from the previous Congress-led United Progressive Alliance government, but then A lot of work has also been done to develop India. More work is needed in this. Arvind Panagariya said that the challenges of the economy have been overcome. A sustained growth of about 7.6 percent till 2047 is considered minimum for developed India. It is very possible to achieve this. Pointing to several reports, he said that India’s GDP is likely to grow by about eight percent in 2024/25.
What challenges did PM Modi face?
Elaborating on his point, Panagariya said, “We forget that in fact, the PM inherited a very fragile economy. Things really got worse in the two or three years after the end of the UPA regime. All this happened due to making the worst laws. We brought the Right to Education Act, which hindered quality education instead of promoting it and we brought the Land Acquisition Act, which clearly hindered the work of the next Prime Minister after UPA. Incredibly in terms of Made difficult because the price of land was increased too much.” Pointing to the cost of land acquisition, he said, “Even in linear projects like roads, the purchase of land constitutes three-fourths of the project cost. This means that for the same amount of money a 2 km road could have been built, you can only Are able to construct 1 kilometer road.”
What improvements still need to be made
Dr Panagariya also highlighted other weaknesses in the economic and administrative system that PM Modi inherited, such as the lack of environmental clearance for infrastructure projects resulting in hardly any projects moving forward. Pointing to red tape, GST and Bankruptcy Code, he said that then PM Modi moved forward to remove these obstacles. Describing the implementation of labor laws as an important step, he said, “We enacted them in 2019/20, but the implementation is still to be done. Once this is done, reforms have to be brought in tax, privatization and higher education etc. “
‘It is possible to make a developed India’
Dr Panagariya told NewsDeskReport that the needs of railways and civil aviation and most importantly other infrastructure related to digital payments should also be addressed. Despite these challenges, he said he was confident that a ‘developed India’ was an achievable dream. He said, “For the last 20 years…if I take from 2003/04 to 2022/23, India’s gross domestic product (GDP) growth rate in current dollar terms is 10.2 per cent. People do not realize That we have grown much faster in dollar terms. If I remove the GDP deflator, which is the US GDP deflator, because we are talking in dollar terms, then this India’s GDP growth rate in real dollars for the period comes to 7.9 percent.”