India likely to need stimulus on demand side as economic growth begins to pick up: Panagariya

10 Aug 2020 Evaluate

Former Niti Aayog Vice-Chairman Arvind Panagariya has said that India is going to need perhaps 'a little bit of stimulus' on the demand side as the country’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP) growth begins to pick up. He also said that imposing import licensing will be a violation of WTO norms that India has signed.  He said 'down the road, as the economy is continuing to open up, if we see that inventories are accumulating rapidly then that would be a clear sign that there is a demand deficiency problem.’

Panagariya has pointed out that even with the current level of intervention, India is staring at the debt-to-GDP ratio rising from 72 percent to about 85 percent at least by the end of the current year. He noted that the government in May announced nearly Rs 21 lakh crore stimulus package to help the nation tide over the economic crisis induced by the coronavirus and subsequent lockdowns. He opined that a large fiscal stimulus in India would not have produced result as it has not given results in the US or Europe. He argued that large stimulus could help if the supply curve is positively sloped.

Talking about the government's 'Aatmanirbhar' programme, he said ‘Aatmanirbharata (self-reliance) does not require that you got to produce everything that you consume. Import substitution is not a good idea. What worried me actually, is turn in the policies that have happened three years ago and the trend has not reversed itself.’ He noted that he does not think that the talk of 'Aatmanirbharata' accelerated the process of import substitution policies.

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