Kolkata: State Finance and Industry minister Amit Mitra blamed the faulty economic policy of the Centre for pushing the country into economic slowdown and at the same time, highlighted the three-pronged strategy adopted by the state government to ensure double digit GDP growth in Bengal. "The economic situation in the country is abysmal. The private consumption is at its seven year lowest, the investment is at 17 year lowest, manufacturing is at 15 year lowest while inflation in January reached its peak in the last 68 months," said Mitra while laying the West Bengal Finance Bill at the state Assembly on Monday. Mitra pointed out that LICs NPA that stood at Rs 12,213 crore in March 2015, has plummeted to Rs 30,000 crore in September 2019. "The Centres decision of stake sell of LIC is nothing but a conspiracy to push LIC into severe losses so that they (Centre) can disinvest in it," he maintained. Mitra claimed that over Rs 11,000 crore has been reduced on account of devolution to the state, while grants in various Centre-sponsored schemes worth Rs 37,973 crore have been denied this fiscal. Moreover, Bengal has not got GST compensation to the tune of Rs 2,406 crore that was due in January. "All put together over Rs 50,000 crore is being denied to the state," he added. It may be mentioned that when Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee met Prime Minister Narendra Modi on January 11, she had raised the issue of this denial. The Finance minister was also critical of the Centre for imposing more cess surcharge upon the states. "Even the economic advisor to the Prime Minister had questioned why the admission of slowdown was not made during the presentation of the Central Budget," he added. According to Mitra, at a time when the growth rate of the country has decreased to 5 percent, Bengals growth rate has been 12.58 percent. "We have allocated a huge amount to social infrastructure, so that money goes in the hands of the poor and common people. This is because the marginal propensity to consume is very high among the poor people. Secondly, we have stressed on building physical infrastructure, thereby increasing demand for products like cement, steel etc. Most importantly, we have laid emphasis on labour-intensive policies, which has contributed to employability," he added. The ministers statement assumes significance as Noble laureates Amartya Sen and Abhijit Banerjee had said that growth rate can be raised only when consumption amount reaches the hands of common people. Talking of employment in the state, the minister cited examples of the proposed logistics hub at Kalyani by Flipkart, which will employ 10,000 people, the second campus of IT major TCS that will employ 15,000 people and the gem and jewellery park at Ankurhati, Howrah, with huge employment potential.

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