In the last few days in India, the country will incur a loss of $ 1.25 billion every week due to the sporadic lockdown imposed in major economic centers. This has been said in the latest Barclays report of April 12. Barclays says the increase in losses reflects some stricter restrictions on activities and the geographic spread of the second wave of COVID. India’s chief economist at Barclays, Rahul Bajoria wrote, “Keeping in view COVID’s sanctions, we estimate that if the current sanctions remain in place by the end of May, the loss of economic activity will be around $ 10.5 billion, or annual nominal gross domestic product (GDP).” Will be around 0.34 percent. However, the impact on nominal GDP in the first quarter of 2021-22 is expected to be more. In the first quarter of FY 2022, nominal GDP will be around 1.4 per cent less. Bajoria has written this report together with Shreya Sodhani.
Barclays estimated in March 2021 that restrictions on movement for two months would cause the economy to lose $ 5.2 billion in output or 0.17 per cent of nominal GDP. It said that they have projected real GDP growth for FY 2022 at least for now, at 11 per cent on an annual basis. It was cautioned that if the restrictions were further tightened or implemented in all economic centers of the country, then real GDP could be lower.
According to official figures, there have been 1,68,912 cases during the last 24 hours in the country. With this, India has emerged as the second most affected and fourth most affected country on the basis of active cases with a total of 1,35,27,717 cases.
In this backdrop, some state governments including Maharashtra and Delhi have announced restrictions on movement. Barclays believes that the number of new active cases is expected to stabilize in May as the number of people recovering is approaching new cases. In addition, vaccination will also accelerate. He said that there is a risk of continuing vaccination in India at the same pace as there are reports of supply shortages and vaccination bottlenecks.
Barclays says that about 60 percent of the country’s economy is being impacted by movement restrictions. Covid-19 cases are increasing in major economic centers like Maharashtra, Gujarat, Tamil Nadu and Rajasthan and there is less movement.
Recently Care Ratings had predicted that the growth in gross value addition (GVA) of the entire domestic economy in FY2022 would fall by 0.32 per cent due to restrictions on movement in view of the increase in cases of COVID in Maharashtra. It said, “Keeping in view the new guidelines, we estimate that a one-month lockdown will impact the GVA of Rs 40,000 crore.” If the lockdown is carried forward, there will be more losses in the state’s production. ‘
