Reforms by Modi govt led to slow down, says Amitabh Kant, NITI Aayog CEO

Giving a bizarre reasoning, NITI Aayog CEO Amitabh Kant stated that the series of reforms undertaken by the Modi government has led to the current slowdown across India.

The statement came from Kant during an event where he was advocating policy decisions to revive the economy.

Addressing at Bloomberg NEF summit in New Delhi, NITI Aayog said, “Firstly, you need to bring in greater levels of liquidity. Secondly, you need to revive the animal spirit of the private sector, you can never create wealth without the private sector. Thirdly, the government needs to get out of business in a range of areas and you need to recycle a lot of government assets such as roads. We have done this with airports.”

“Gas grids, gas pipelines, transmission lines should be privately-owned. NITI Aayog has recommended a vast range of public sector for privatisation. Once we have private sector coming in, bank credit will start flowing in and this is critical. Fourthly, we must push for major structural reforms as we did earlier.”

“One of the reasons for the slowdown is that it has had too much of reforms — GST, IBC, RERA — a huge set of reforms which we have undertaken and I think the next round of reforms must revolve around sectors like oil and gas, mining, coal. We must commercialise coal mining, railways and they will really drive the growth in India,” Kant said.