Rajkot: Terming the Demonetization and bad implementation of GST as ‘destroyer’ of economy, Senior Congress leader and former finance minister P Chidambaram today said that he would have resigned had he been asked to implement demonetization as finance minister.

Chidambaram was here today to interact with the local traders/businessmen in Hemu Gadhvi hall and he also interacted with media.

‘Our economy grew by 8.5 per cent between 2004 and 2009 (during UPA regime), which is the best ever rate in India so far. But it has slowed down terribly since 2014. Still Finance Minister (Arun Jaitley) insists that macroeconomics are strong. If the economy is strong, why the government needed to announce 6 lakh crore Bharatmala programme. Why bank recapitalisation,’ he said.

‘The economy has slowed down because of demonetization. None of the objectives of demonetization has been achieved. They couldn’t catch any black money. There’s nothing like black money or white money. The colour of notes are not black. It’s the same as old ones. Demonetization has destroyed small and medium businesses so new jobs are not being created. Big business don’t create many jobs, it is the small and medium businesses which do it. Demonetization was like a step of burning the whole house to kill a mosquito,’ he said.

‘Before the economy could recover from demonetization, the country had this ‘great GST’. There are multiple rate slabs in this GST. This is not GST. Please call it by some other name. GST stands for Gabbar Singh Tax, the rate must not be more than 18 per cent in any circumstance. People now say GST is bad idea. But GST is not a bad idea. The GST law is a bad law,’ he said adding that economy is at inflection point which might go up it right steps were taken and go down if wrong steps are taken and the growth rate must not go down below 5.7 per cent as India doesn’t deserve growth rate less than this.
He also said that the Value Added Tax (VAT) which was introduced during the Congress rule in 2005-06 did not see any protest in country because they had worked very hard in preparing it
He also said that the answer to shadow economy was a better taxation system and not demonetization. The shadow economy in India was only 12%. He also said that he was a supporter of digital payment system but it should be for high value transactions and small traders and businessmen should not be forced to adopt it. value of digital transaction in Nov 2016 was 94 lakh crore and was same in June 2017 also.

Talking about the Bullet train project which was launched last month by PM Modi in the presence of Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe in Ahmedabad, Chidambaram said, this should not be a priority today. There were other priorities.

To a query regarding arrest of an ISIS operative who was associated with a hospital whose trustee was senior Party leader Ahmed Patel, Chidambaram said that it was outrageous to make allegations against Patel who had resigned from the post of the trustee of the Hospital in 2015.

DeshGujarat