KOLKATA: Ahead of the Union Budget, the principal chief advisor to Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee and the state’s finance department, Amit Mitra, on Tuesday, shared some statistics claiming India’s growth projection has faltered while private investment is not coming in the manner expected by the government
Sharing numbers, he revealed that an economic survey of the financial year 2022-23 showed that India’s GDP growth rate in FY 2023 is expected to be 7 per cent (in real terms) while the Budget estimate of 2022-23 had expected a growth rate of 9.2 per cent (in real terms). Mitra highlighted the “huge gap” between expectation
and performance.
Further, concerning employment, he shared that the unemployment rate was 4.2 per cent in 2020-21. Citing the Centre for Monitoring Indian Economy (CMIE) as the source for the obtained data, he shared that on December 2022, unemployment grew to 8.3 per cent which is a 16-month high. He concluded that it caused a huge negative impact on the common people.
In the external sector, he shared that the trade deficit was Rs 8.56 lakh crore (April-November 2021). Citing the Ministry of Commerce as the source of the obtained data, he shared that this deficit grew to Rs 15.53 lakh crore from April – November 2022. Trade deficit doubled between 2021 and 2022 (April-November), he pointed out.
In the case of investment, he claimed that the “Finance Ministry is publicly appealing to the industry to invest which is an indication that private investment is not coming in the manner expected by the government”.