SME Times News Bureau | 13 Feb, 2021
A speedy economic recovery is underway on the back of higher job
creation, strong stock market, healthy GST collections and elevated
manufacturing PMI levels in January, said industry body PHD Chamber of
Commerce and Industry.
Accordingly, 9 out of the 10 indicators of
QET of economic and business activity tracked by the industry body have
shown positive trends in January.
"At
this juncture, to continue the recovery momentum of economic and
business activity, immediate policy attention is required towards credit
access to industry and services sectors. Credit disbursement should be
the top most priority at this juncture by the banking sector," Aggarwal
said.
"The focus should be on ensuring the provision of
hassle-free disbursements of loans vis-a-vis enhanced liquidity for
MSMEs, especially in rural sectors," he added.
In addition,
Aggarwal cited the need to lower interest rates for consumers and
businesses, and lesser compliances for MSMEs vis-a-vis ease of doing
business at the ground level.
Out of all the indicators,
unemployment rate has shown highest sequential improvement of around 28
per cent in January 2021 over December 2020.
However, E-way Bill
generation has recorded a decline. It decreased to 62.9 million in
January 2021 as compared to 64.1 million in previous month of December
2020.
As per the data, January 2021 QET performance is in sync
with the performance of December 2020, while it is better as compared to
October and November 2020.
"Economic and business indicators
such as unemployment rate, stock market, GST collections, manufacturing
PMI, forex reserves, railway freight, merchandise exports, exchange rate
and passenger vehicle sales have shown positive sequential growth in
January 2021 as compared to December 2020," Sanjay Aggarwal, President,
PHD Chamber of Commerce and Industry, was quoted as saying in a
statement.
According to Aggarwal, the expectations of a positive GDP growth in Q3 and Q4FY21 are becoming strong.