GOVT WON'T SPEND STIMULUS MONEY 'BLINDLY': SANYAL

Principal Economic Advisor Sanjeev Sanyal on Wednesday said the government would be mindful of splurging money in the next round of stimulus, which would aim at asset creation in a bid to boost demand in the economy “We are a fiscally conservative government as we tend to stick to the fiscal trajectory… Our debtTO-GDP ratio is much lower than many countries and there is a case for allowing it to go up to inflate demand. But we will not spend blindly. We will be careful of what we spend on,” Sanyal said.

The government should continue with the stimulus for three years to revive the economy and it should not be one off, Pronab Sen, the chairman of the Standing Committee on Statistics, Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation, said on Wednesday. The improvement in economic activity at the moment is due to the pent-up demand, he said at a webinar organised by the Bharat Chamber of Commerce.

“What is happening at the moment is due to pent-up demand, which has come to the market and has led to certain increase in economic activity,” Sen, the former chief statistician of India, said. According to him, “The government gameplan should be to continue with the stimulus for three years and not be one off ”. He said when Covid-19 struck India and the lockdown began, there was already a negative momentum in the economy and capacity utilisation had gone down.

The government should immediately pay off the dues of the states, beneficiaries of social sector schemes and clean its budget, he said.