Note ban caused loss of millions of jobs, says Manmohan Singh at CWC meet

He adds the private sector has collapsed and the economy is just running on public spending

Former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on Tuesday said the country's growth has slowed down mainly because of demonetisation and the economy is running on just one engine of public spending.

He expressed serious concern over the situation, particularly the impact on job creation.

Singh, in his intervention at the Congress Working Committee (CWC) meet, talked about the decline in the economic growth as depicted in the last quarter gross domestic product (GDP) numbers.

He said the slowdown was primarily due to demonetisation announced by Prime Minister Narendra Modi on November 8 last year.

He said the Gross Value Addition (GVA) is the true sub-measure of economic activity and it has experienced a steep and sustained fall.

"Private sector investment has collapsed and the economy is running on just one engine of public spending," he said at the meeting, chaired by Congress President Sonia Gandhi.

Singh said the GVA growth of the industry has fallen from 10.7 per cent in March 2016 to just 3.8 per cent in March 2017, a decline of nearly seven percentage points of growth.

"The most worrisome aspect of all this is the impact on job creation. Jobs have been extremely hard to come by for the youth of the nation," he said.

The former Prime Minister noted that the construction industry, which is one of the largest employment generators in the country, has suffered contraction.

This, he said, "implies loss of millions of jobs for the nation's workforce".