Terming the 20 lakh crore package announced by the Narendra Modi government as ‘jumla’, former chief minister and head of the Congress task force on COVID-19 Prithviraj Chavan has demanded that the central government should table one more budget in the monsoon session of the parliament.
He also demanded that the poor must be helped with a direct cash transfer scheme. “The central government should implement a NYAY-like scheme suggested by Congress in its 2019 Lok Sabha election manifesto. Unless the poor, labourers, farmers and small enterprise owners get direct cash in their hands, the market cannot be revived. The government should table a fresh budget. It should not hesitate to publish additional notes and must not worry about fiscal deficits,” he demanded in his digital press conference.
“The package announced by the central government did not help any sector. The package lacks the provision for direct cash help and only stresses on loans. Generally, a stimulus package includes monetary stimulus (which includes finance and loan supply) and fiscal stimulus. But in the central government’s stimulus package, only 2 lakh crore will be spent directly and the remaining 18 lakh crore will be given as loans or will be spent on various schemes in the next five years. Industries and businessmen are not having any income. To suggest that they should take a loan to recover the losses is like rubbing salt on their wounds,” he slammed.
Package not helping MSME
“The Modi government has announced to supply loans of Rs 3.70 lakh crore to the MSME sector through three schemes. We should first analyse this sector. India has a total 6.34 crore units under MSME. Out of these, 6.30 crore, which means 99.4 per cent, are micro industries. A tea seller, a xerox shop owner, and a saloon owner fall under micro-level enterprises.
These 6.34 lakh MSME have 11.1 crore labourers, which constitute 30 per cent of the total labour. Out of these, 10.76 crore labourers work in micro-level enterprises. As per the announcements by the union government, the MSME having a turnover of 100 crore and loan dues of Rs 25 crore upto February 29, 2020, can get a loan of either 20 per cent of the loan dues or a maximum of Rs 5 crore. But for this, these enterprises should not fall under the NPA category. These criterias have directly excluded the biggest micro enterprises sector. This simply means that Rs 6.30 crore enterprises employing 10.76 crore people will not get any benefit of this package,” he pointed.
Stimulus by US, Germany, UK
Germany has launched a scheme to pay 60 per cent salaries of labourers. The European Union has decided to implement this scheme and has made provision of 100 billion euros or Rs 8 lakh crore, Chavan said.
“The United States of America has launched a package where the person having an annual income below 75,000 dollars will get direct financial support of USD 1,200. The total expenditure on this scheme is 23 lakh crores,” he said.
The United Kingdom government has launched a scheme for job retention. As per this scheme, each needy person will get 2500 pounds or Rs 2.25 lakhs.
