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Govt spending vital for reviving economy: PHD cheif
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SME Times News Bureau | 19 Oct, 2020
Describing the Indian economy as "resilient", PHD Chamber of Commerce
and Industry President Sanjay Aggarwal has said that the damage caused
by the coronavirus pandemic and the eventual nationwide lockdown was
huge.
He said that there is massive requirement of public
expenditure, that too from the Centre, as states are not in a good shape
in terms of their finances.
The newly appointed President of the
premier industry body was of the view that the government's policies in
terms of lockdown and unlock were very much required.
He
observed that the 23.9 per cent contraction in the Indian economy in the
April-June quarter was a huge loss, but improved indicators in
September, including GST collections, auto sales and export numbers gave
an optimistic outlook.
Citing the increase in digital payments
and automobile sales along with reports of decrease in job losses by
September-end, Aggarwal told IANS that there is resilience in the Indian
economy.
"The point is that the resilience is there, but the
damage has been huge. The gap that has been caused, the hole that has
been dug, is going to need a lot of filling," Aggarwal said.
Appreciating
the National Infrastructure Pipeline (NIP) announced last year by the
government, he said that now is the time for investments to be made
through the pipeline.
The industry body chief said that it is not the time now to spend keeping in mind the limits under the FRBM Act.
"This
(NIP) is something that now needs to be taken up in all seriousness and
the expenditure has to be frontloaded rather than backloaded," Aggarwal
said, observing that the Centre should on an urgent basis make
investments, as private investments are unlikely at this juncture and
states also are not in a good shape financially.
Aggarwal noted
that there might be an impact on fiscal deficit but this is not the time
think of limits set by the Fiscal Responsibility and Budget Management
Act.
"There may be an impact on the deficit, but if you look at
the world economy, people have gone up to 20 per cent of the economy for
the Covid relief measures. Our budgetary support to the Covid relief
measures is not more than 1.5 per cent," he said.
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