Mumbai: South Asia’s biggest economy has been ineffective in stamping out the coronavirus outbreak and it will show up in its economic performance: India is set to lag regional peers in the race to recovery.
The relative success of Pakistan, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh in containing the virus will help their economies recover at a faster pace than India, Capital Economics Ltd. said in a report to clients. India is now one of the world’s virus hotspots, with about 5.5 million cases.
“New cases per capita in these three economies are far lower than in India,” said Shilan Shah, senior economist at Capital Economics in Singapore. “This has enabled a faster rebound in activity.”
As a result, the drop in gross domestic product in 2020 will be much less severe in Bangladesh, Pakistan and Sri Lanka. Whereas, India is expected to post a double-digit slump.
Although per capita testing is higher in India compared to its neighbors, the share of tests coming back positive have fallen in the three neighboring economies, suggesting genuine progress in getting the virus under control, according to Our World in Data figures produced by the University of Oxford and Global Change Data Lab.
“Whatever the reasons, the important point from the economic perspective is that the lower prevalence of cases has meant that containment measures have been scaled back at a quicker pace than in India,” said Shah.
Also read: India’s Covid-19 tally crosses 55 lakh with 75,083 new infections, recovery rate 80.86%
Let’s not go overboard in comparison. In South Asia, except India rest of the economies cannot remain solvent for more than 4 quarters if no foreign loan/aid is available. India is currently testing a lot, maximum in the world on a per day basis, rest of the South Asian counties don’t even have resources to conduct tests leave alone treatment. India is doing even better than the US when it comes to treatment – looking into number of treated people per day or even overall count till now.
It’s an insult to be compared to the rest of the South Asian countries.
Guest workers returning from the Gulf might find new openings in South Asia itself.