FM says he had said the same as Subbarao on economic woes

NEW DELHI: Finance Minister P Chidambaram today reacted to RBI Governor D Subbarao's comments on the reasons for the current economic woes, saying this is what he had said a couple of days ago.

"This is no different from what I said day before yesterday," he told reporters here when asked to comment on Subbarao's criticism of government policies leading to a slowdown in the economy.

Subbarao blamed the "loose fiscal stance of government during 2009-12" for slow growth and high inflation.

"Had the fiscal consolidation been faster, it is possible that monetary policy calibration could have been less tight," he said in his last public lecture as RBI Governor.

Speaking in Parliament on Tuesday, Chidambaram attributed the current woes not just to external factors, but to domestic factors allowing the fiscal deficit to be breached and the current account deficit to swell because of decisions taken during 2009-2011, a period when Pranab Mukherjee was the Finance Minister.