The Congress on Monday attacked the Narendra Modi government over the state of the economy, PTI reported. It said the Bharatiya Janata Party must acknowledge the “acute slowdown” in the country and move beyond piecemeal approach to put the “economic mess” in order.

Congress General Secretary Priyanka Gandhi Vadra accused the BJP government of not doing enough to tackle the fall in growth. “Companies are being shut down for 10 days in a month due to recession as there is no work,” Vadra said in a tweet. “But the BJP government has deliberately closed its agenda for improving the economy.”

“The economy is in real bad shape and the government is shying away from finding a solution to improve it,” she added.

The Reserve Bank of India in a report on Friday said fund flows from lending institutions to the commercial sector have declined as much as 88% till mid-September in this financial year. Congress spokesperson Supriya Shrinate said the RBI report pointed to an “acute economic slowdown” at press conference in Delhi.

The report said flows collapsed from Rs 7.36 lakh crore between April and mid-September 2018 to Rs 90,995 crore in the same period this year. “We would want the data to be mulled upon,” Shrinate added. “We need to understand it. In the last one year, fund flow to the commercial sector is down by 88%, according to a new RBI data. Last year, this figure was at Rs 7.36 lakh crore now it is around Rs 91,000 crore.”

She said the developments took place despite the reduction in the repo rate by the central bank.

“Repo rate is down by 1.35% from January to now,” Shrinate said. “Despite that people are not taking credit because they’re not convinced that they can do economic activity with this credit because people are insecure about their jobs.”

“The piecemeal approach continues but the government does not have a comprehensive solution to put the economic mess in order,” the Congress spokesperson said. “The fault lines are very vivid in the Indian economy but there doesn’t seem to be a comprehensive approach to resolving it.”

She also cited the consumer confidence survey by the RBI, and said it has plummeted to a six-year low. Shrinate urged the BJP government to acknowledge the economic problems and to take “bold reforms” to justify the political mandate received by them.

India’s economy has been faltering in the last few quarters. Economic growth rate slipped to 5% in the April-June quarter, the lowest in over six years, and the outlook is not too good. The Reserve Bank of India on Friday lowered the economic growth rate forecast to 6.1% for this year from 6.9%. International agencies have also revised the projections down.

Core sectors such as automobiles and manufacturing have witnessed a progressive slowdown because of weakened consumer demand and dearth of investments. The government has announced multiple measures to boost the economy in recent weeks.

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