The Opposition parties, led by the Congress on Wednesday accused the Centre of sending contradictory signals on economic reforms, and said the Mid-Year Economic Review was silent on how it proposed to achieve the Tenth Plan target of 8 per cent growth.
Leader of the Opposition in the Rajya Sabha, Manmohan Singh, said the government's volte face on the reduction of interest rates, and the criticism from within the Bharatiya Janata Party on the recommendations of the Kelkar Committee, sent wrong signals.
He also said the government did not mention in the review the steps it would take to tackle the core issue of unemployment and poverty. Finance Minister Jaswant Singh is expected to reply to the debate.
The former finance minister also said the flip-flop attitude on fiscal prudence and the proposals to cut subsidies were incorrect.
"Soon after the publication of the two documents on direct and indirect tax reforms, there were efforts to dilute their impact, and the finance minister's statement debunked the recommendations of the Kelkar Committee by assuring that there would no withdrawal of tax incentives for household savings and housing loans," he said.
He also said things that bothered the common man should constitute the core issue, which was unfortunately missing in the review.
The Opposition leader also asked, with the mid-year review projecting a 5-5.5 per cent growth rate for 2002-03, how the government proposed to achieve an annual 8 per cent growth target set for the Tenth Plan.
He added that sanctions and disbursements of loans by financial institutions had shown a steep decline, which meant all was not well in the investment market.
Nilotpal Basu of CPI-M said the mid-year review was just a litany of statistics without a pointer on how to tackle increasing unemployment and the incongruity of mounting food stocks amid starvation deaths.
Basu said the situation did call for a mid-term review, but not in the way it had been done by the finance ministry.