COVID Support

670 Million Vaccine Doses Will Be Given Before Festive Season: Finance Minister

• ByStartupStory     |    July 9, 2021

The finance minister after going by the vaccination rate for June said that it estimates 670 million Covid-19 vaccines will be administered before September under the Centre’s revised centralized vaccination policy. Further, it has asked certain States such as Assam, Bihar, Tamil Nadu, Uttar Pradesh, West Bengal, and Jharkhand to increase their vaccination drive as greater coverage could provide a crucial boost to domestic demand. The average vaccination rate doubled in June from 1.93 million to 4.13 million doses in May after the implementation of the new vaccination policy on June 21, the finance minister said.

“Maintaining a rapid pace of the vaccination drive and quickly bridging health care infrastructure gaps across both urban and rural areas would emerge as the most sustainable stimulus for durable recovery of the Indian economy. At the current inoculation pace, it is estimated that India will administer over 670 million doses before the festive season begins in September. A significant coverage by the vaccine could provide a crucial boost for domestic demand. Vaccination remains the key guard against any prospective future waves and the coverage of the population needs to be enhanced across all States,” the finance ministry’s Department of Economic Affairs (DEA) said in its Monthly Economic Review for June.

The report further claims that resilient tax collections by the Centre in the first two months of the current fiscal and sustained momentum in capital expenditure, particularly in the road and rail sector, augurs well for pivoting targeted fiscal support for continued economic recovery. However, the recent economic relief package would further oil the wheels of the capex cycle via implementation of the production-linked scheme and streamlining of processes for public partnership projects and asset monetisation. Consumption sentiment is projected to rise with further enhancement of employment support under Aatma Nirbhar Bharat Rozgar Yojana (ANBRY) and wider Bharat-Net digitisation coverage. Free food grains and enhanced fertiliser subsidies under the package along with continued MGNREGA implementation, on the other hand, would serve as a cushion for rural demand in the coming quarters, the report noted.

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