“Prepare for attack on IMF, Gita Gopinath”: P Chidambaram’s forecast

Former Finance Minister P Chidambaram feels government ministers could train their guns on the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and its India-born chief economist, Gita Gopinath, after the Fund announced reduced growth forecasts for India.

"IMF Chief Economist Gita Gopinath was one of the first to denounce demonetisation. I suppose we must prepare ourselves for an attack by government ministers on the IMF and Dr Gita Gopinath," Mr Chidambaram tweeted.

The IMF on Monday slashed India's growth forecast to 4.8 per cent, a cut of 1.3 per cent in just three months. In its World Economic Outlook released in Davos, Switzerland.

The IMF has said, "Domestic demand has slowed more sharply than expected amid stress in the nonbank financial sector and a decline in credit growth."

P Chidambaram said the revision was "window dressing" and was likely to go even lower. The IMF predictions bring the biggest markdown for any emerging market.

Chidambaram, said he wouldn't be surprised if India grew slower than 4.8 per cent in 2019-20.

Gopinath said the downgrade for India was responsible for the IMF trimming down global growth forecasts.

"We have projected global growth at 2.9 per cent for 2019 and 3.3 per cent for 2020, which is 0.1 percentage point lower than the October estimates.

The vast majority of it comes from our downgrade for India which was quite significant for both years," Gita Gopinath said.

Chidambaram's Congress colleague Kapil Sibal alluded to this this detail out in a tweet attacking Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Home Minister Amit Shah.

Pointing to ongoing protests against the Citizenship Amendment Act, he said the duo were "a drag on Indian democracy.