Economic Survey 2021-22: A snippet of the previous 2020-21 survey

31 Jan 2022 , 11:46 AM

All eyes are now set on the Economic Survey 2021-22 which will be presented by Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman today. The survey is an annual report card of India’s economy comprising a detailed performance of broad-based sectors, and accordingly, future targets and measures will be announced.

The Survey 2021-22 is expected to give a growth projection of 9% for India’s economy during the next financial year amid the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic crises.

While the nation awaits the final report of Economic Survey 2021-22 by FM, let’s have a look at the 2020-21 survey outcome.

The Economic Survey 2020-21 was dedicated to the COVID Warriors. India focused on saving lives and livelihoods by its willingness to take short-term pain for long-term gain, at the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. Notably, India was the only country to announce structural reforms to expand supply in the medium-long term and avoid long-term damage to productive capacities.

In the Economy in 2020-21, it was said that India adopted a four-pillar strategy of containment, fiscal, financial, and long-term structural reforms.

The survey 2020-21 announced that India’s real GDP to record an 11.0% growth in FY2021-22 and nominal GDP to grow by 15.4% — the highest since independence. Rebound to be led by a low base and continued normalization in economic activities as the rollout of COVID-19 vaccines gathers traction.

So far, in FY22, India’s gross domestic product (GDP) rose by 8.4% during the July-September quarter of 2021-22 compared to a 7.4% contraction in Q2 2020-21. Quarterly GVA at Basic Prices at Constant (2011-12) Prices in Q2 2021-22 showed a growth of 8.5%.

Furthermore, on Monday, the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare announced that with the administration of more than 28 lakh Doses (28,90,986) vaccine doses in the last 24 hours, India’s COVID-19 vaccination coverage has exceeded 166.03 Cr (1,66,03,96,227) as per provisional reports till 7 am today.

In the process reforms of the Economic Survey 2020-21, the following was announced:

• India over-regulates the economy resulting in regulations being ineffective even with relatively good compliance with process
• The root cause of the problem of overregulation is an approach that attempts to account for every possible outcome
• Increase in complexity of regulations, intended to reduce discretion, results in even more non-transparent discretion
• The solution is to simplify regulations and invest in greater supervision which, by definition, implies greater discretion
• Discretion, however, needs to be balanced with transparency, systems of ex-ante accountability and ex-post resolution mechanisms
• The above intellectual framework has already informed reforms ranging from labour codes to the removal of onerous regulations on the BPO sector

This Economic Survey 2021-22 will take into consideration the second and third waves of the pandemic.