India’s ₹20-lakh-crore stimulus package has been termed by a top UN economic expert as ‘impressive’. While launching the World Economic Situation and Prospect (WESP) report update recently, Hamid Rashid Chief of the Global Economic Monitoring Branch told reporters that the package ‘is a very welcome development’ and the ‘largest so far in the developing countries’.
According to Julian Slotman, Associate Economic Affairs Officer, economic analysis and policy division, Department of Economic and Social Affairs (EAPD/UN DESA), the size of India’s stimulus package is ‘impressive’ and “seems to be of a magnitude that will help to reassure markets and to boost domestic consumption. But at the same time when people are simply not able to spend, you cannot expect the economic growth to suddenly magically re-appear.
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Most developing countries have been rolling out stimulus packages that are between 0.5 per cent and 1 per cent of their gross domestic products (GDP), Rashid said.
India’s package works out to roughly 10 per cent of its GDP.
The financial package announced by the United States amounts to 13 per cent of its GDP and Japan’s is over 21 per cent of its GDP.
“India has the domestic financial market and the large capacity to implement that large stimulus package,” Rashid said, adding that impact of the package would depend on the design of the stimulus, according to a news agency report.
