Rahul believes Pakistan handled corona better than India

NEW DELHI: In a jibe directed at the Narendra Modi-led government in New Delhi, India’s main opposition leader, Rahul Gandhi, on Friday praised Pakistan for handling the coronavirus better than his own country's government managed to do.

“Another solid achievement by the BJP government. Even Pakistan and Afghanistan handled COVID better than India,” Gandhi said while sharing the projected growth of countries in 2020-21.

The graph predicted that Pakistan’s economy would suffer a significantly smaller contraction (0.4 percent) compared to South Asian counterparts India (10.3 percent), Afghanistan (5 percent) and Sri Lanka (4.6 percent). International media reported that the Congress leader had shared a chart that depicted IMF growth projections.

The IMF, in its latest report, had said the global economic crisis will not be quite as grim as feared this year, but global GDP will still contract by 4.4 percent and the ongoing pandemic means the outlook remains uncertain. The global lender said countries like India, Spain and Italy will suffer double-digit economic declines in 2020, while Britain just misses that threshold with a 9.8 percent contraction.