Budget disappointing, govt neither has will nor capacity to improve economy: Cong

Describing the Union budget as "disappointing", the Congress on Wednesday said the government neither had the will nor the capacity to improve the state of the Indian economy.

Congress spokesperson Gaurav Gogoi said there was a lot of expectation from the recent budget after the 2019 Lok Sabha poll mandate in favour of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, but people neither got any benefit in the first five years of his government nor were likely to get any additional benefits in the future.

"The budget was most disappointing. It has no impact on the highest unemployment rate in the last four decades or on the lowest GDP in the last few years," he told a press conference here.

The BJP-led government was so incompetent and financially so bankrupt that even when the crude prices had decreased to USD 53 per barrel in the international market, it was unable to pass on the benefit to the ordinary Indian consumers, Gogoi said.

"When you go back in time and remember the 2009 prices, when in the international market crude was somewhere around USD 58, the retail price of petrol was around Rs 40 per litre and that of diesel was much less.

"It just shows what Rahul Gandhi has been saying all this while that this government neither has the will nor the capacity to improve the state of the Indian economy and the Indian consumers continue to suffer from this incompetence," the Congress leader said.