Former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh said that India must take three crucial steps to restore the economy that has been damaged due to the ongoing coronavirus pandemic, the BBC said on Sunday.
In an interview with the British news company, Dr Singh said the steps need to be immediate to restore economic normalcy.
Dr Singh said that the Central government must first ‘ensure that people’s livelihoods are protected and they have spending power through a significant cash assistance’. He added that the Centre is required to make adequate capital available for businesses through ‘government-backed credit guarantee programmes.’
Finally, Singh said, the Centre is required to fix the financial sector through ‘institutional autonomy and processes.’
Earlier, Dr Singh had slammed the centre’s decision to put on hold Dearness Allowance to central government employees and Dearness Relief to central government pensioners, saying that it was not right to impose hardships on government employees at this stage.
The Congress had also mocked the centre over its economic policies after a Oxford Economic report said that India will take the longest to recover from COVID-19's economic impact.
While quoting a report, Congress said: "Oxford Economics Report states India will take the longest to recover from COVID's economic impact. The report further states that the govt's attempts to "Unlock" are proving to be futile, as the pandemic is still in full force in many parts of India."
According to Oxford Economics report, India fares the worst in its Asia recovery scorecard, implying that the country will likely take the longest among major economies to converge to its pre-coronavirus growth level. Oxford Economics, in a report titled 'India: A reopening gone wrong', said the central government's attempts to restart the economy are already running aground.
"In our baseline, we expect GDP growth to lose momentum from late Q3 on, once the push from the initial reopening fades and, likely compounded by the ongoing pandemic and inadequate policy support, legacy economic headwinds re-assert themselves. The risk clearly is that proactive steps by regional governments, especially the richer ones, to stem the spread of the virus bring the tipping point forward," it said.
