PM announces ₹20 lakh crore economic stimulus package

PM announces ₹20 lakh crore economic stimulus package

It will focus on self-reliance; lockdown to continue with significant changes

13/05/2020, NISTULA HEBBAR,NEW DELHI

Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Tuesday said a new-look Lockdown 4.0 beyond May 17 was in the offing, while announcing an economic stimulus package for ₹20 lakh crore (estimated at 10% of the GDP), with a clearly defined leap towards economic reforms that will, in his words, lead to Atmanirbhar Bharat, or a self-reliant, resilient India.

This amount includes packages already announced at the beginning of the lockdown, incorporating a slew of measures from the RBI and the payouts under the Pradhan Mantri Garib Kalyan Yojana.

‘Relook at systems’

Addressing the nation on television, Mr. Modi said the whole world was reeling from the crisis engendered by the COVID-19 pandemic, as was India. In this crisis, however, India had had an opportunity to look at systems and institutions that were in existence before the crisis hit and how they crumbled. “We have been hearing for many years that the 21st century will be India’s century and this crisis is, I believe, one that carries a message, that we have to move forward not just to combat the crisis but to prevail,” the Prime Minister said. “That can happen when we are self-reliant.”

Ramped-up capacity

He gave the example of India’s ramped-up capacity in producing Personal Protection Equipment (PPE) kits and N-95 masks required by medical personnel and frontline health workers to illustrate his point that India could achieve this.

“When the first case hit us, we didn’t produce either of these things. Now, within weeks we have the capacity to produce 2 lakh of PPE and 2 lakh of N95 masks everyday,” Mr. Modi said.

Clarifying that by self-reliance he did not mean insularity and suspicion of the world as in the past, but embracing the world in the spirit of Vasudheva Kutumbakam (the world is one family).

“Self-reliance in this sense is neither exclusionary nor isolationist, it is for helping the world, with our actions. In the past whenever we have acted it has impacted the world in a positive way — be it solving the Y2K riddle in 1999 or our campaigns against open defecation, tuberculosis and polio,” Mr. Modi said.

He said that the new edifice of this self-reliant India would be based on the five pillars of the economy, infrastructure, demography, technologically driven systems and to strengthen demand and supply chains, with the supply chains being based on local sourcing.