NEW DELHI: Claiming vindication in the wake of revised growth figures of past years, Congress said the two UPA governments from 2004 to 2014 gave the highest decadal growth since independence but BJP squandered the robust economy it inherited because of its flawed policies.

Addressing a press conference Sunday, former finance minister P Chidambaram took a swipe at the Modi government and said, "The current regime inherited an economy that was on the upswing. Unfortunately, after the first two years, the government stumbled and the momentum was lost. The main reasons were demonetisation, flawed implementation of GST and tax terrorism."

Chidambaram said the other reason for fall in growth was stagnation in investment. "The peak gross fixed capital formation as a per cent of GDP was 34.3% in 2011-12. Even in 2013-14, it was 31.3%. However, in the last three years, it has remained constant at 28.5%. At that level of investment, it is not possible to achieve higher growth rates," he argued.

Besides listing what he called were reasons for falling growth, Chidambaram mocked that the finance ministry in Modi regime was run by three ministers - a de facto, a de jure and an invisible one.

Congress's attack on BJP came after a government report gave revised growth figures for past years based on change of base year from 2004-05 to 2011-12. The average growth rate under UPA-1 government was 8.87%, during which it also clocked double digit growth rate of 10.08% in 2006-07, while under the UPA-2 dispensation, the average growth rate was 7.39%, Chidambaram said.

