Manmohan Singh Takes Potshots at Note Ban, ‘Hasty’ Rollout of GST

Last year, he called the demonetisation move “organised loot and legalised plunder.”

Former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on 18 September warned of demonetisation again and "hasty" implementation of GST adversely impacting GDP growth.

Singh, who had previously cautioned against the note ban shaving off 2 percent of the GDP, said demonetisation of 86 percent of the currency in circulation and the hasty implementation of the Goods and Services Tax (GST) have impacted informal and small scale sectors, which account of about 40 per cent of the $2.5 trillion economy.

Both demonetisation and the GST have had some impact (on GDP growth)...Both would affect the informal sector, the small scale sector... The sectors today are responsible for 40 percent of GDP.

Manmohan Singh, former Prime Minister

Ninety percent of India's employment is in the informal sector, he told CNBC-TV18.

And the withdrawal of 86 percent of currency plus also GST, because it has been put on practice in haste, there are lots of glitches which are now coming out. These are bound to affect the GDP growth adversely.

On 25 November last year, some two weeks after old Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 currency notes were junked, Singh had in his Parliament speech termed demonetisation a "monumental mismanagement", "organised loot" and "legalised plunder" which would cause GDP growth to fall by 2 per cent.

GDP growth in the first quarter of the current fiscal slumped to a three-year low of 5.7 percent, down from 7.9 percent in April-June quarter of 2016. In January-March quarter, the growth declined to 6.1 per cent from 8 percent in the year-ago quarter.

The government had blamed de-stocking ahead of the rollout of the Goods and Services Tax (GST) from 1 July as the primary reason for the fall in the GDP growth rate.

GST unified more than a dozen central and state levies like excise duty, service tax and VAT, but its implementation has seen technical glitches with the registration and tax filing portal, forcing the government to postpone return deadlines.

In April, when the supporting GST Bill was passed in Parliament, the former Prime Minister had hailed it as a "game-changer" while cautioning against the difficulties in its implementation.

On August 30, the Reserve Bank of India said nearly 99 percent of the Rs 15.44 lakh crore junked currency had returned to the banking system, raising questions on the efficacy of the government's note ban decision that was aimed at curbing corruption and black money.