Indian Billionaire Banker and the president of Confederation of Indian Industries, Uday Kotak recently gave a statement about Indian economy could normalize by March 2022 and what must be done to achieve it.
“My personal view is this time our opening-up has to be very calibrated based on expert advice and specifically focussed on our capacity to handle COVID, in terms of oxygen, hospital beds and medication. I would much rather we store the supplies and surplus and even if it leads to wastage because while wastage costs are bad, they are much less than the cost of losing human lives”, says Uday Kotak.
Further, he added “Similarly, we need to pick up vaccinations. We are now probably three to four months away from when we will get a little more comfort on the percentage vaccinated. Therefore, by that time around –September-October – I think we will reach a point that we would have reasonable vaccination, plus COVID positive peak cases, and immunity thereof for us to be comfortable. These three or four months are crucial in getting the balance between lives and livelihoods and looking at what COVID 2.0 has done and the fear it has created instates’s minds and individuals. I see the opening up as gradual and calibrated. As vaccines pick up, hopefully the variants will also be under control”.
For the Indian economy he stated, “Therefore, economic outcomes will depend on that. If we are seeing some sort of a normalisation on vaccination and calibrated opening between now and September, then by September we should see economic activity normalise significantly. My expectation of economic outlook is that by end of March 2022, the size of the Indian economy will be the same in real terms as it was in March 2020.”
Uday Kotak is an Indian Banker and Executive Chairman and managing director of Kotak Mahindra Bank, he is also the outgoing president of the Confederation of Indian Industries to be succeeded by TV Narendran, Managing Director of Tata Steel.
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