A month of national lockdown can eat up 1-2% of GDP: Report

“A month of nationwide lockdown costs 100-200 bps of GDP. This poses a 300 bps risk to our 9% real GVA growth forecast for FY22,” Bank of America Securities India economists said

April 26, 2021 07:31 pm | Updated 07:31 pm IST - Mumbai

They also expect the Reserve Bank to come to aid by funding government’s welfare measures like resumption of free food grains to the needy in May-June.

They also expect the Reserve Bank to come to aid by funding government’s welfare measures like resumption of free food grains to the needy in May-June.

A month-long national lockdown to arrest the spread of COVID 2.0 could shave off 100-200 bps of GDP, leading to a 300 bps risk to annual growth, a brokerage report has flagged while expressing doubts over the ability of local lockdowns to control the pandemic.

The second wave of the coronavirus inflection has caught the government off-guard with the daily cases jumping over 6.5 times in the past 30 days.

With close to 3.53 lakh fresh daily infections, the country is the worst hit globally. Death toll jumped to 1,95,123 as of 8 am Monday, with a daily new peak of 2,812 deaths in the past 24 hrs, according to the government data.

“It remains to be seen if the second wave subsides without a national level lockdown. A month of nationwide lockdown costs 100-200 bps of GDP. This poses a 300 bps risk to our 9% real GVA growth forecast for FY22,” Bank of America Securities India economists Indranil Sen Gupta and Aastha Gudwani said in an note Monday evening.

Given this high economic cost, they expect the Centre and the states to try to contain the spread with further tightening of night curfews and localized lockdowns.

They also expect the Reserve Bank to come to aid by funding government’s welfare measures like resumption of free food grains to the needy in May-June, for which it needs an additional ₹26,000 crore or 0.1% of GDP, through OMOs/G-Saps and other liquidity infusing measures to arrest the rise in yields.

They expect the RBI to remain on hold in FY22 and hike rates by 100 bps in FY23.

“To slow rise in yields, we expect the RBI to conduct USD 68.7 billion of OMOs/G-Saps and hike and extend banks’ HTM limits by 2% of their books to FY26, and continue forward forex intervention,” the brokerage said.

On the vaccination front, they said while 8.7% of the total population has received the first dose, only 1.6% have got both doses.

0 / 0
Sign in to unlock member-only benefits!
  • Access 10 free stories every month
  • Save stories to read later
  • Access to comment on every story
  • Sign-up/manage your newsletter subscriptions with a single click
  • Get notified by email for early access to discounts & offers on our products
Sign in

Comments

Comments have to be in English, and in full sentences. They cannot be abusive or personal. Please abide by our community guidelines for posting your comments.

We have migrated to a new commenting platform. If you are already a registered user of The Hindu and logged in, you may continue to engage with our articles. If you do not have an account please register and login to post comments. Users can access their older comments by logging into their accounts on Vuukle.