As the economy faces revenue crisis amid the coronavirus outbreak, Govenment of India (GoI) dropped three key policies, reported Reuters.
Well, India has already been suffering from a financial crisis even before coronavirus hit the markets. Now, the economy is shrinking further as the virus has spread in most parts of the country affecting the local businessmen to tycoons in the industry.
While we were focusing on the spread of virus and people succumbing to it, we forgot to look at what has the government been doing meanwhile. To begin with, the government dropped three key policies that was slated to be initiated in the ensuing months.
One of the policies was to lower the import taxes on vegetable oils, reported Reuters.
In January, the food ministry had proposed to lower the import taxes on vegetable oil, including palm oil by 3.7% in order to keep the domestic prices in check. This has now been dropped by the finance ministry as India faces severe revenue crunch.
Additionally,the food ministry also dropped its policy that aims at raisin the supply of subsidized rice and wheat to people under a welfare programme.
Further, the finance ministry also dropped food ministry's plan to provide vitamin-fortified rice to poor.
However, the finance ministry has not commented on this yet but the lowered revenue amid the virus outbreak will likely lead to dropping of several key policies earlier proposed by respective departments.
Now, considering the current situation, the finance minstry has urged other ministries to refrain from taking any new proposals further and curb the expenditures till the situation gets better.
This is just the beginning and we don't what's in the plate for the markets as we battle the deadly virus.
According to Ministry of Health, India has 137 positive cases of which 24 are foreign nationals. Maharashtra has a maximum of 36 cases as per its data, Kerala has 24, while Uttar Pradesh and Delhi have 14 and 8 respectively. Three people have, as of now, succumbed to the virus in India.
