The Congress, ahead of the Union Budget 2022, blasted the Economic Survey as a ‘self-serving cheerful assessment’. The annual report card of the economy on Monday projected India’s GDP growth from 8 to 8.5% in the next fiscal year. 

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Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman tabled the Economic Survey 2021-22 in Parliament after the President’s address to both Houses of Parliament on Monday.

The Economic Survey is presented a day before the Union Budget and it outlines the state of the Economy and suggestions for policy actions.

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“The Union Budget’s thrust should be to stimulate the ailing economy, revive sectors, boost consumption, encourage investment and create jobs but the Economic Survey does not see any of these as a problem,” the Congress said. 

Former Finance Minister and Congress leader P Chidambaram said that the Economic Survey ‘repeats ad nauseum that at the end of 2021-22 the Economy would have recovered to the pre-pandemic level (2019-20)’.  

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“This is a time for contrition and change (of approach), not for boasts…” he added. 

Congress’s Randeep Surjewala in a series on tweets said that the Economic Survey is a ‘self-serving cheerful assessment of economy raises doubts about what the Budget is set out to achieve’. 

“It is a classic case of what statistics say” versus “what they actually reveal”. It clearly reveals the gross economic mismanagement by the Modi government,” he added.

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The Economic Survey further added that the Indian economy is projected to grow by 9.2% in real terms in 2021-22 considering the GDP growth rate contraction by 7.3% in 2020-21.

Agriculture and allied sectors are expected to grow by 3.9% as compared to 3.6% in the previous year. Industrial sector growth is estimated at 11.8%. The services sector is the worst hit by the Covid-19 pandemic, it is estimated to grow by 8.2% in 2021-22 after the 8.4% contraction in the previous fiscal, it added.