Government working on another stimulus package, says Finance secretary Ajay Bhushan Pandey

Finance secretary Ajay Bhushan Pandey on Sunday hinted that the government is working on another stimulus package but he refrained from giving a timeframe.

“We keep monitoring the situation on the ground to assess which sector of the economy or segment of the population needs what kind of help at which time and respond accordingly. We keep taking suggestions from industry bodies, trade associations, various ministries and after going through their suggestions and requirements of the economy, we come out with timely measures,” Ajay Bhushan Pandey said in an exclusive interview to ANI.

Pandey said that he could not give a timeframe for the stimulus package, but yes the government was on it and deliberations on further interventions were on.

Talking about the current state of the economy, Pandey said that the economy was recovering and moving towards sustained growth.

The Reserve Bank of India had last month said that the economy is likely to contract by 9.5 per cent in the current fiscal. GDP contracted 23.9 per cent in the first quarter of the fiscal, as per the estimates of the Central Statistics Office (CSO).

The Finance Secretary said the government has started electronic invoices from October 1. On an average 8 lakh invoices were being generated daily. It picked up quickly and on October 30, in a single day 29 lakh electronic invoices were generated. “If we see the growth of the FMCG, auto sectors, it shows that we are going in the direction of sustained growth,” he said.

Pandey said, “We are analysing every sector and this is a continuous process. Since the COVID-19 outbreak, we have been continuously monitoring every sector. Whatever was required for helping migrants, vulnerable sections of the rural or urban populations, we did. When the nation was in lockdown, we gave cash to women Jan Dhan account holders in their bank accounts through DBT. We provided early instalments to farmers under PM Kisan Yojana.”