Yashwant says economy is in a downward spiral

New Delhi, Sept 27: Senior BJP leader and former Finance Minister Yashwant Sinha today blamed Finance Minister Arun Jaitley for the economic slowdown, saying the economy is headed for a downward spiral. In a hard-hitting opinion piece in a leading daily, Indian Express, Mr Sinha writes, 'I shall be failing in my national duty if I did not speak up even now against the mess the finance minister has made of the economy.' Many in the Bharatiya Janata Party, he said, were aware of the situation but were not speaking up 'out of fear'. According to Mr Sinha, demonetisation proved to be an 'unmitigated economic disaster' and a 'badly conceived and poorly implemented GST has played havoc with businesses and sunk many of them and countless millions have lost their jobs with hardly any new opportunities coming the way of the new entrants to the labour market.' Going by the old method of calculation, the growth rate the economy of 5.7 per cent was actually 3.7 per cent or less, he warns. Gunning for the Finance Minister, who he describes as 'considered to be the best and the brightest in this government', he is scathing in his criticism that 'even a superman like Jaitley could not do justice to the task' of coming to the rescue of the economy. UNI