The beneficiaries of the second set of announcements are expected to be micro, small, and medium enterprises, farmers, women, poor, migrant workers, and other marginalised sections of the society, reports Arup Roychoudhury.
'The numbers are null and void now. Look, we can give out projections now, but we know that a week later those numbers will also be irrelevant. So we need to wait,' a top government official said.
A government official said out that with hardly any economic activity, an immediate duty hike will not be productive and could be announced once the lockdown eases and demand revives.
This is because the bond market has factored in the Rs 4.88-trillion gross borrowing for April-September 2020.
The stimulus package is expected anytime this week and will be aimed at the urban and rural poor; disadvantaged sections of society; MSMEs and some of the worst-affected sectors.
It is likely the government will divide the country into different zones during the proposed extended period of lockdown and might permit a few services to function in safe zones.
'A large number of people are suddenly waking up to the fear of losing jobs,' says Shyamal Majumdar.
The downward surprise in Q2 stemmed from a stronger-than-anticipated drag from gross fixed capital formation and marginal weakness in private final consumption expenditure. In Q3, projection errors emanated mainly from a steep unanticipated contraction in gross fixed capital formation, which was the deepest in the new series of GDP.
Even with the Rs 20,000 crore distributed among states, it will still be a fraction of what they have been demanding in financial support and clearance of pending dues.
This permission was given some time late last month, before the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) on March 31 issued the indicative borrowing calendar for the states for April-June and the one for the Centre for April-September.
'At this point of time, West Bengal is doing better than other states in tackling the crisis. We have a chief minister who herself has hit the streets to do what is to be done, and at the same time ensuring a proper lockdown. She is also trying day and night to set up the requisite infrastructure.'
To meet the revised estimates for 2019-20, the central government will have to garner Rs 5.03 trillion in total revenues in March, which has seen the worst phase of the coronavirus pandemic so far and the resultant lockdown.
'This is a period of significant uncertainty, of unknown unknowns.'
Officials said there had been no official word or indication from the top yet. The expectation from officials is to do what they can, but it is understood that all fiscal and budgetary targets don't matter anymore.
While the meetings on Friday were preliminary discussions, it is learnt that sectors like tourism; hospitality; aviation; micro, small and medium enterprises (MSMEs); and livestock have sought deferring loan repayments and temporary tax holidays in specific cases to help them tide over the steep fall in economic activity.
''Even without major reforms, with a business as usual scenario, and with current inflation trends, we should be clocking around 11 to 12 per cent nominal growth.' 'That is not happening and is a source of worry,' Rathin Roy tells Arup Roychoudhury.
To address the supply crunch, CII has suggested leveraging the existing excess capacity in the Indian industry; rolling back import duty hike to look for alternative sources of imports; expanding credit to manufacturing units with quick loan sanctions, and one-time emergency waiver of non-performing asset regulations for three months.
While the FPI limit on most bond issues would not be raised above 6 per cent, there would be some in which there would be no limits, reports Arup Roychoudhury.
It's impossible to get the actual number of people dying and not getting compensation but the number is obviously much more than stingy official estimates. In any case, nowhere in the world are people sent inside gas chambers without oxygen cylinders and masks. Unofficial estimates suggest that on an average, one sanitation worker dies every five days all over the country, writes Shyamal Majumdar.
'If you do quick back-of-the-envelope calculation, someone earning Rs 10 lakh can get a benefit of anywhere between Rs 35,000 and Rs 45,000, even if s/he is availing exemptions.' 'A large proportion of people do not avail full exemptions as they don't have money to invest in those schemes.'
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