NEW DELHI: In a jibe directed at the Narendra Modi-led government in NewDelhi, India’s main Opposition leader, Rahul Gandhi, on Friday praisedPakistan for handling the coronavirus better than his own country’sgovernment managed to do.

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

The graph showed predicted that Pakistan’s economy would suffer asignificantly smaller contraction (0.4%) compared to South Asiancounterparts India (10.3%), Afghanistan (5%) and Sri Lanka (4.6%).

India Today reported that the Congress leader had shared a chart thatdepicted IMF growth projections.

The IMF, in its latest report, had said the global economic crisis will notbe quite as grim as feared this year, but global GDP will still contract by4.4% and the ongoing pandemic means the outlook remains uncertain.

The global lender said countries like India, Spain and Italy will sufferdouble-digit economic declines in 2020, while Britain just misses thatthreshold with a 9.8% contraction.