What are those lacunae? They have pointed out on several counts. They have found the failure of the government on overall economic performance, performance of the public sector, performance on employment generation, Government's measures to handle the inflation, on fiscal deficit, plight of farmers, FDI and inadequacies of our regulatory framework. These are some of the issues, which the hon. Members in their observations have highlighted while making their comments on the Interim Budget. Sir, I found one striking commonality that what I stated in my Budget observations and the Budget Speech, the hon. Members have also indicated the same other languages. What I stated in my Budget Speech. Yes, I expressed satisfaction on the overall performance of the Government for the full period of five years because is the end of the mandate, which we received five years ago, and it is quite obviously in conformity with the parliamentary etiquette and responsibility to give an account. Yes, I express my satisfaction over the performance. What are the reasons for the satisfaction? The satisfaction is very simple. Never before in the history of this country, could we find a period of three consecutive years where the economy has registered a sustainable growth of nine per cent. Mr. Speaker, Sir, most humbly I would like to submit that I had the privilege in the last two decades of being in the Finance Ministry occasionally and with a little command, which I have on the subject. I can say that never before the country has registered, over a period of five years, 8.6 per cent GDP growth in our economy. From 1951 to 1979 which is a long period, our GDP growth rate was 3.5 per cent. In the whole decade of Eighties, the GDP growth hovered around 5.6 per cent to 5.7 per cent.
