New Delhi: On a day the Indian Rupee crossed the Rs 80 per Dollar mark amid fears that it could soon breach the Rs 100 per Dollar mark, the Congress blamed PM Modi for the weakest currency in 70 years. “PM Modi is harmful to the Indian Rupee. The currency is weakest under him over the past 70 years,” Congress spokesperson Supriya Shrinate said.
She reminded PM Modi of his earlier statements when he used to call then PM Manmohan Singh weak and used to blame the leader for a weak currency. “Wake up PM, your prestige is at stake,” she said. The Congress leader claimed that when the previous UPA government left office in 2014, the Indian currency was at Rs 58 per Dollar but has crossed Rs 80 per Dollar now.
A sliding currency is not only a macro-level economic crisis for a few government institutions but adversely impacts the citizens in the form of high fuel prices and high food prices which upset the household budgets and also makes the imports costlier, said the Congress leader.
“The government must explain the decline of Rs 22 per Dollar in the value of the currency over the past eight years. The Rupee is sliding against the Dollar due to high inflation and a ruined economy. It is a vicious cycle. But the government is not even admitting that there is a problem, let alone addressing it,” she said.
Also read: Rupee edges closer to 80-mark, slides 18 paise to 79.99 vs dollar
Taking a dig at Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman’s remarks that the situation was due to an international financial crisis and that the government was watching the developments, the Congress spokesperson said the previous UPA government too faced a global financial crisis but worked along with the Reserve Bank of India to bring both the economy and the currency back on track.
“In 2013, the then US Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke announced that his country was tapering the government bonds. This led to a fall in the Rupee value by 15 per cent between March and August 2013. The Rupee went down from Rs 59 per Dollar to Rs 69 per Dollar in four months. But the then government did not hide behind international reasons. It adopted a multi-pronged approach and worked along with the RBI to resolve the crisis,” said Shrinate.
“In a short period, the then UPA government was able to bring the currency back to Rs 58 per Dollar, boosted foreign investment from $12 billion to 435 billion and raised the country’s GDP by 2 per cent,” she said. In 2013, then PM was Manmohan Singh, the finance minister was P Chidambaram and RBI Governor was Raghuram Rajan.
The Congress leader said that the RBI has spent around $40 billion since January to defend the Rupee but the situation is only worsening. “There are fears that the currency may breach the Rs 100 per Dollar mark over the coming days. This will further dent the economy and hit the people hard,” said Shrinate, adding that, “today the investors do not trust this government and are therefore investing their money abroad. Amid all this, the government appears to be directionless.”
