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Congress seeks Rs.1 lakh crore to enter market

Special Correspondent

NEW DELHI: The government expects an enormous Rs.1 lakh crore to enter the market in the next 100 days as a result of the two stimulus packages announced in the past one month to boost the economy.

“The priority of the two economic packages is to increase productivity, control inflation and protect employment. The packages would stimulate the internal demand that would give a push to economy,” Congress spokesperson Manish Tewari told reporters here on Monday. The idea behind the packages is to tell the world that the fundamentals of Indian economy are sound and the steps taken by the government in the past three months have ensured that the global meltdown did not adversely impact India, though there has been some negative impact also, he said.

Reiterating that the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) was committed to ‘aam aadmi,’ Mr. Tewari sought to explain that the government had done fairly well in the economic sector despite a major setback on the global front due to recession. “But it is necessary to evaluate the performance of the past four and half years and also foresee the challenges of the future.”

According to Mr. Tewari, the average of inflation between 2004 and 2009 had been 51.12 per cent despite the slowdown and the average growth rate 8.9 per cent as compared to 1999-2004 when the average inflation was 5.15 per cent and the growth rate 5.8 per cent. He said the growth in the coming year was expected to be between 7 and 7.5 per cent.

The fiscal deficit between 1999-2004 stood at 4 per cent while after that it had been 2.2 per cent but would go up this year because of the global slowdown while the tax collection during the period was 9.2 per cent and 12.5 per cent respectively.

The economy could survive the global recession only because of internal accruals and less dependence on foreign investment. It is more of a crisis of confidence now, he said.

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