Almost 80 per cent of all income losses during the first wave of the pandemic in 2020 were incurred by the private sector in India, while in many other countries the entire loss was on respective governments, a report said on Wednesday.
While the Centre had announced a Rs 21 lakh crore COVID-19 relief package, comprising 10 per cent of the GDP, the actual financial support was only about 2 per cent of GDP, as the rest was all credit-driven.
“Almost four-fifths of all income losses during the pandemic in 2020 were incurred by the private sector in the country, while the government sector bore only about a fifth of the losses.
“This is in stark contrast to Australia, Canada, and the US, where the government sector incurred all the losses and eventually ended up transferring net resources to the private sector,” Motilal Oswal Financial Services analysts Nikhil Gupta and Yaswi Agarwal said in the report.
The income losses incurred by the Indian government by far was the the least at only about 20 per cent, while it was 100 per cent in the US and Canada. In Australia, the public sector loss according to the report was 200 per cent.