Centre 'not doing enough' to address the current economic crisis: Amit Mitra

Kolkata: Criticising the Centre for "not doing enough" to address the economic crisis arising out of the Covid crisis, senior Trinamool Congress (TMC) leader and state Finance and Industry minister, Amit Mitra said it should have spent more to boost demand in the country.

On Sunday, again, Trinamool Congress Rajya Sabha MP Derek O'Brien took a dig at the Centre by urging people to "think" after retweeting a post of economist Kaushik Basu.

Basu, who is the former Chief Economist of the World Bank, tweeted: "India's growth has collapsed from over +10% in 2010 to around -10% in 2020. This is so rare; observers worldwide are puzzled. My hypothesis: There's evidence that growth depends on not just economic policy but on trust in society. The rise of divisiveness and hate is eroding trust."

Mitra stated: "What should have triggered in the mind of the government is the Great Depression, which has happened when the COVID-19 pandemic hit the economy. There should have been sufficient government expenditure to boost demand. The reason being the private sector cannot do the same."

Neither demonetisation nor the hasty implementation of GST had become successful. But nothing was done to analyse the same. This comes when the country's GDP had been falling, Mitra said. "Exports and bank lending are falling," he said, adding that "there are the whole set of negatives in the structural domain".

It may be mentioned that Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee has repeatedly attacked the saffron-party led Central government for taking no concrete steps to address the issues of "falling economy" of the country. She recently said that the Centre is neither taking any steps regarding the "falling economy" of the country nor the border issues are being tackled properly and the interesting part is that the Union Home Minister is campaigning for his party in a municipal poll.