Countering Congress' charges on country's economic condition, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley on Friday said government inherited a lot of fiscal woes from the previous UPA government and India has moved from 'fragile five' to 'bright spot' in the world.
“UPA had unacceptable level of current account deficit, under BJP rule it has been less than 1 per cent. Fiscal deficit is qualitatively better and quantitatively lower than it was under UPA. Revenue deficit under UPA was unacceptable. We inherited 4.5 per cent fiscal deficit from UPA and have brought that down to 3.5 per cent,” Jaitley said in Rajya Sabha.
“CAD is lower than what was under UPA when P Chidambaram was Finance Minister and GDP growth in 2012-13 was 5.3% and 6.3% in following year under Congress, compared to 5.7% in one quarter under BJP,” Jaitley said.
On corporate tax, Finance Minister said it was P Chidambaram who first mooted the idea of corporate tax of 25 per cent. “Bringing down corporate tax rate to 25 per cent for all will lead to revenue loss of Rs 40,000-50,000 crore and can only be brought phase wise.”
Speaking over rising inflation, he said during last three years of UPA it was 9.4 per cent, 10.4 per and 9 per cent respectively, and the NDA govt has brought it down significantly.
On fiscal slippage, Jaitley said it is statistical primarily due to shortfall of GST revenue of one month in current fiscal
He also hit out at UPA for not being able to spend MNREGA fund. “UPA was never able to spend Rs 40,000 crore MNREGA fund,” he said.
Before Jaitley, the opposition parties accused the BJP-led government of “feku federalism” and “arrogance”, saying the union budget was a “betrayal” of the farmers and warning the ruling party not to mislead the people.
Participating in the debate, Neeraj Shekhar of the Samajwadi Party said the budget was a “betrayal” of the people, especially farmers who were still committing suicide and being forced to sell their produce in the market below the minimum support price.
Observing that Congress leader P Chidambaram had sought answers to 12 questions on the budget from the Finance Minister, O'Brien solicited replies from Railway Minister Piyush Goyal on 12 queries relating to his ministry.
Asking if railways was a union subject, why were the states being asked to bear the expenditure for its infrastructure creation, he said “this feku federalism (of the Centre) won't do” and the states should not be cheated.
O'Brien asked why the Depreciation Reserve Fund provision was slashed to Rs 500 crore in the Railway Budget from Rs 5,000 crore. He said the compounded annual growth rate (CAGR) of the Railways which was 6 per cent earlier had come down to 2 per cent in the last 3.5 years in the NDA regime.
The TMC leader also qustioned the commercial viability policy of the government, saying there was talk of 8 railway routes in Bengal being shut.
To this, Railway Minister Piyush Goyal said the Public Accounts Committee of Parliament had suggested it, but the issue was resolved after Minister of State for Railways Manoj Sinha's intervention.
Stating that this year's budget was most challenging one since government came to power, SAD leader Naresh Gujral urged the government to fullfill the promise of providing MSP 50 per cent more than the cost of production.
Rajeev Shukla (Cong) sought to know the formula on which basis the cost of production of agri-produce will be decided while fixing higher MSP as promised in the budget. He however lauded the Health Insurance scheme but asked the government to be cautious as nursing homes might end up taking advantage of it.
D Raja (CPI) said the government suffered from “ideological and psychological bankruptcy and hypocrisy” as it does not have any strategy to generate revenues.