India’s priorities should be to protect the most vulnerable people, well targeted support and protecting small and medium sized enterprises so that they do not collapse as the country battles the Covid-19 pandemic, Kristalina Georgieva, managing director of the International Monetary Fund, has said.
Speaking at a news conference during the ongoing annual meeting of the IMF and the World Bank, Georgieva said on Wednesday: “Like everywhere else, until we have a durable exit from the health crisis, we will be faced with difficulties, uncertainty, and uneven recovery.”
Describing Covid-19 as a human crisis everywhere, and especially in countries where the loss of life has climbed up so much, she said: “In India, 100,000 people had died. Therefore, focusing on protecting people and on the health of the population remains a priority.”
“India has taken measures within the capacity of the country — 2 per cent fiscal measures plus 4 per cent in the form of guarantees, not direct fiscal measures,” Georgieva said.
“This helps, but if you compare what advanced economies have been able to do, what some of the other emerging markets with very strong fundamentals could do, clearly is somewhat constrained.”
“What we see in India is a very dramatic shrinkage of GDP this year by over 10 per cent, according to our just released forecast.
“Let’s remember that it stepped into this crisis as one of the fastest growing economies in the world. For next year, our projections in baseline scenario is return to growth of 8.8 per cent,” she said.