Double-digit delight for Manmohan era

-The Telegraph

New Delhi: A new set of economic data put out by a sub-committee of the National Statistical Commission has shown that the UPA government under Prime Minister Manmohan Singh clocked a double-digit growth rate of 10.08 per cent in 2006-07.

The new calculations have to be vetted by the Central Statistical Commission and by a standards authority before they become officially acceptable.

If the figure holds even after that scrutiny, the 10.08 per cent growth in gross value added (GVA) – the new metric that strips out the impact of product taxes and subsidies – achieved in the third year of UPA-I rule means the Manmohan government had achieved double-digit growth, which has been generally regarded as an elusive pie-in-the-sky dream.

The best growth rate the Modi government has achieved during its four years in office is 8.1 per cent in 2015-16.

The highest-ever growth rate since Independence was recorded at 10.2 per cent in 1988-89 when Rajiv Gandhi was Prime Minister. GDP growth had crossed into double digits for the first time on the back of a 15.4 per cent agricultural growth. Since that was measured on a different base year, the figures of the Rajiv years and the Manmohan years are not comparable.

The latest set of data was finalised on July 15 and placed in the public domain recently.

The National Statistical Commission’s sub-committee was headed by Sudipto Mundle, emeritus professor with the National Institute of Public Policy.

The panel calculated the new growth rates for the years 1994-95 to 2013-14 on the base year of 2011-12, thereby creating a back series enabling like-to-like comparison.

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