FICCI welcomes announcement of second tranche of economic package by Finance Minister

May 14, 2020

NEW DELHI, 14 May 2020: Commenting on the second tranche of the economic package announced by the Finance Minister earlier today, Dr Sangita Reddy, President, FICCI said, "After yesterday's significant liquidity enhancement measures, we saw a series of steps taken today to take care of the welfare of the people and offer supportive arm of the government to the most vulnerable and weaker sections of society. Today's announcements take forward the elements that were mentioned in the Pradhan Mantri Gareeb Kalyan Yojana and add more dimensions to it. We hope that the government has planned for the implementation of these schemes well in conjunction with the state governments who will have a major role to play here."

"There has been a mix of both short term measures as well as long term plans that would enable us to remain prepared for managing the disruption in people's lives by episodes such as the one being seen today," she added.

In the first category, we can list steps like provision of food-grains for the next two months to non-ration card holders, 2 percent interest subvention on shishu-mudra loans after the moratorium period, offer of easy loans to street vendors and release of additional funds to the tune of Rs 30,000 crore from NABARD to provide for post rabi harvest work and preparatory work for kharif crop. The second category comprises measure such as National Portability of Ration Cards and affordable rental housing scheme for migrant workers. Besides these measures, steps like bringing in more farmers under the network of Kisan Credit Cards and offering lower middle-class subsidy for purchase of houses under the affordable housing scheme should help prop up demand in the economy.

"While we welcome these announcements, the real challenge as we foresee lies in the implementation of the same. On several occasions we have seen that identification of the beneficiaries is a major challenge and we hope that under the programs, the delivery of intended benefits is not limited by the implementation capacity of the state machinery. This would be the key. FICCI would therefore advocate that even as the government takes more such measures it should try and leverage the benefits of the excellent JAM trinity that has been created and consider transferring larger cash amounts directly into the Jan Dhan bank accounts of people," said Dr Reddy.