'Stop politicking' over state of country's economy: Priyanka tells Sitharaman

Congress general secretary Priyanka Gandhi on Sunday hit out at Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman, asking her to stop 'politicking' over the state of the country's economy.

"Does the government accept that there is a slowdown or not? The Finance Minister needs to get over politicking about the state of our economy and come clean with the people of India," Priyanka said on her official Twitter account retweeting ANI's post.

The Congress leader asked if the government is ready to acknowledge and resolve the massive economic mess created by them.

"How do they plan to resolve the massive problem they have created if they aren't even ready to acknowledge it?" she further said.

Priyanka's response comes close on the heels of Sitharaman in Chennai saying when asked if the government acknowledges there is an economic slowdown, "I am meeting industries and taking their inputs, suggestions on what they would want and expect from government, I am responding to them. I have already done this twice. I will do it more number of times."

Talking about the economy, which reported a sluggish growth of 5 per cent in the last quarter of the current financial year, Sitharaman said that her government was prepared to respond to the industry's "needs and suggestions."

She said that the government is in consultation with sectors which wanted to speak to us about various measures they expect.

"Having heard them and having spent some time on how we can respond, the first tranche of announcements were made on August 23. Last Friday, I made another set of announcements. The process of consultations is over. We have worked on how we can respond," she told reporters in Chennai.

The Finance Minister said the issues of each sector vary. "Automobile (sector) has an issue. Agriculture has a different issue. So each sector has a sectoral requirement, which we want to respond," she said.