At a time when India is struggling with a medical crisis, an economic crisis, and a financial crisis together, the country needs to focus on attracting foreign direct investment, providing fiscal stimulus, and providing monetary stimulus. These three steps together, along with medical solutions, can reduce the damage caused by the coronavirus pandemic, Nilesh Shah, MD at Kotak Mahindra Asset Management said in an interview with The Indian Express. Calling the present situation as Na Bhuto Na Bhavishyati event, he added that India should replace made-in-China goods with made-in-India goods, by stopping importing those things which can be easily made in India.
Indicating the assets of India such as the world’s largest cotton productions, Nilesh Shah underlined that it is important to compete with China. He added that a country like Bangladesh has three times more garment export than India despite them not growing much cotton or despite them not having much yarn capacity.
India, a factory to the world
Nilesh Shah also brought the attention towards the goodwill that India has earned by exporting hydroxychloroquine to the world in this unfortunate time and suggested to encash this goodwill by establishing a manufacturing base and become the factory to the world. After the 1991 reforms of liberalisation, India made a solid gain by swelling up its GDP. In order to protect it from reversing, he said that the country needs to consolidate on this and step further with herculean efforts from entrepreneurs, businessmen, government, and citizens.
Markets amid Covid-19
The volatility in the stock markets are set to remain until a full-proof medical solution and vaccine for coronavirus is out in the market. However, Nilesh Shah added that the markets are forward-looking and thus they will bottom out way before the economy bottoms out. He added that the markets have been extremely polarised and there are few stocks which have done well and some indices have not fallen as much as the broad market.