By Anil Mishra
Panaji, Jun 3 (UNI) The Indian industry expects some sort of hand-holding by the government in the short term so that the restarting of their business and projects investment becomes easier, according to a survey conducted by Projects Today, India’s premier projex monitoring organization.
Speaking exclusively to UNI, Shashikant Hegde, Director and CEO, Projects Today. said In an effort to contain the spread of COVID-19 pandemic, the Government of India declared a nationwide lockdown on 24 March 2020.
"Though initially it was for 14 days, the rapid increase in the number of Corona cases forced the government to extend the lockdown four times. The longest and the unprecedented lockdown brought the economy to a standstill and witnessed a massive reverse migration of labour from their worktown to hometown. The lockdown halted all ongoing projects investment activities across the country. Though since May 2020, limited economic activities were allowed in Green and Orange zones, as per Projects Today the ongoing projects investment stuck in the 130 districts classified as Red zones were to the tune of 8,917 projects worth Rs 21,11,985 crore,: he said.
Mr Hegde said though in the short term, the ongoing pandemic was expected to push the economy into the negative growth zone, a number of economists, industrialists also opined that post COVID-19, India would emerge as one of the fastest-growing economies and has the potential to be the next Manufacturing hub of the world.
"They see a number of foreign companies shifting their manufacturing bases to India to make it their alternate source of production. On the backdrop of these developments, Projects Today decided to conduct an All-India Survey of experts in the project fraternity to pick their brain and learn their views on the current situation and the likely projex (projects expenditure) scenario in major sectors during the post-lockdown period," he said.
"We asked the participants about the short-term and long-term scenario post lifting the lockdown and major hurdles they would face in re-booting their businesses and projects. Of the 233 Survey participants, 90 respondents (38.6 per cent) opined that investment activities will revive with immediate effect in the Drugs and Pharmaceuticals and Healthcare sectors. Given the increased demand for drugs and hospital facilities in the country, they think companies in these sectors would like to create quick capacities to encash positive business opportunities," he said.
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