Chief Ministers urged to lift restrictions on economic activities
CII President T V Narendran expects the Union Budget 2022-23 to provide for fast-tracking investments and developments under National Infrastructure Pipeline and Gati Shake program, and has urged state governments to lift restrictions on economic activities, given that the Omicron variant of Covid is well within the manageable level.
“These (development) activities will be dampened if curbs on economic activity were to continue,” he added on 23 Jan 2022.
CII, he said, has written to state Chief Ministers with suggestions regarding the level of curbs on markets and factories.
CII has suggested:
One, social and economic activities need to be considered separately. Social activities, in particular mass gatherings for any social, sports, entertainment, recreation, etc. purposes, should be restricted in general to curtail spread of the Omicron variant.
Two, CII has suggested a containment strategy based on micro containment zones. These are small, clearly marked geographical areas identified and demarcated by district administrations, such as mohallas, neighbourhoods, villages, talukas, urban bodies, pin-codes, etc. to monitor and manage the outbreak.
Three, a key recommendation is to use a combination of vaccination rate, hospitalization incidence and sero-prevalence, if available, to determine the level of restrictions in the micro containment zones. According to CII, containment at micro zones should be considered only when available hospital beds are 75% occupied. Normal economic activities should continue until this level is breached in a micro zone and anyway should be permitted in the rest of the district.
Four, even in micro containment zones, all factories may be allowed to function under certain conditions of hygiene and safety. There should be no distinction between essential and non-essential goods and services. All shops may be permitted to open without restrictions on timing to avoid crowding at certain times. However, crowd control is essential to enable social distancing, stressed CII.
CII has also requested for fast-tracking of imports of all international approved mRNA and protein based vaccines at a price to be determined by the Government. This would open up booster shots to all sections of society.
“With bounceback in demand, the economy is expected to achieve 9.2% growth rate over 2021-22,” Narendran said.
“However, this pace must continue for full recovery and faster growth in the medium term and to ensure that workers and small enterprises do not suffer.
“While vaccinations have helped in dampening the impact of Omicron on the lives of people, the present conditions are conducive to opening up the economy completely while keeping large social gatherings to a minimum,” he said. fiinews.com
