Delayed decisions of the Centre and the Reserve Bank of India with regard to economic policies led to “fuelling” of inflation in the country, charged former Union Finance Minister and senior Congress leader P. Chidambaram in Karaikudi on Friday.
The Centre should have taken the decision of reducing fuel prices three months back. “This failure has fuelled the inflation. Similarly, the Centre should have reduced the GST rate for select products and brought down excise duty on imports. But, now the Centre was not able to control the situation in the wake of increasing crude oil price following Russia-Ukraine war,” he told reporters.
Similarly, the RBI had taken a delayed decision on increasing the Repo rate, the only tool available with it to check inflation.
Mr. Chidambaram said unilateral decisions led to the economic crisis in Sri Lanka, which had better per capita income, higher literacy rate, higher exports. “If a country like Sri Lanka could get into such an economic crisis, it was high time India learnt from it,” he said.
The Congress veteran said instead of taking unilateral decisions, the Centre should discuss with experts and the opposition before taking important decisions for producing desired results.
On the initial public offer of LIC, Mr. Chidambaram said the timing and the strategy of the Centre on the move were wrong that led to “big bungling” which made the “strong” public sector unit “sick”. To a question on the condemnation from Arab world that forced India to react on the issues pertaining to minorities in India, Mr. Chidambaram said the Centre had not listened to the advice of the opposition parties all these years.
“Suddenly, it has woken up from deep slumber after other nations pointed it out. What kind of message this sends to the people of the country, when the Centre responds only to outsiders?,” he asked.
When asked to comment on the BJP’s eight-year-rule, the former Minister pointed to the poor show in world hunger index with a ranking of 101.
Mr. Chidambaram said that Congress was not for fielding its own candidate, but a common candidate of all opposition parties in the forthcoming Presidential election. However, he was not sure about the outcome of the poll as some of the opposition parties were “fence-sitters”.
The Congress had initiated steps to talk to all opposition parties on the issue, he said.
