Lockdowns will cost economy Rs 1.2L cr

New Delhi RESURGENCE of Covid-19 has changed India's macroeconomic narrative from being a linear V-shaped recovery in FY22 to being a story of a lost quarter, says Emkay Global in a report. Accordingly, the report cited that amid increasing geographical spread of virus, the bottom-up projections now suggest that for every month of current localised lockdowns, the output loss would now be Rs 1.25 lakh crore from Rs 75,000 crore as per the restrictions seen in mid-Apr 2021. "The fall in secondary and tertiary sector capacity utilisation varies between 10 per cent and 40 per cent among States," said Madhavi Arora, Lead Economist, Emkay.

She said the estimates imply a monthly loss of GVA growth by 90 basis points compared with loss of more than 40 basis points in output growth per month during Covid-I lockdown.

"Clearly, factors such as better adapted firms and policy response, stable financial conditions, vaccine drive, pent-up demand release and robust global growth spillovers create growth buffers," she said. "Assuming Covid-II peaks in May 2021 and restrictions ease by Q2FY22, we mark down our FY22 GDP forecast to 9.9 per cent from 11 per cent earlier."

However, she pointed out that the situation is still in a flux, but as per current dynamics, the expected Q1FY22 annualised growth is seen at 16.5 per cent from more than 22 per cent estimated before the second wave.

Their estimated monthly loss of output of 0.9-1 per cent of GDP is much higher than the estimated welfare cost of universal vaccination at 0.6-0.7 per cent of GDP, thus making a successful vaccine strategy the cheapest policy path to economic normalisation.

Lately, India reported record new daily increase in coronavirus infections, prompting new lockdowns and restrictive measures to curb the spread of the pandemic.

The exponential rise in new Covid cases in India is a humanitarian crisis. It also raises concerns about the country's economic recovery and currency fluctuations.