Big investment needed for sustainable growth across sectors like infra and healthcare: Das
He noted that there would be a need to guard against any emergence of the digital divide, as digitisation gains speed after the pandemic
A big push towards infrastructure investment, education and digital economy is needed to achieve sustainable growth and generate employment in smaller cities, Reserve Bank of India (RBI) governor Shaktikanta Das said on Wednesday. While speaking at the 48th AIMA National Management Convention through video conference he said that, as we recover (from the pandemic), we must deal with the legacies of the crisis and create conditions for strong, inclusive and sustainable growth. Limiting the damage that the crisis inflicted was just the first step; our endeavour should be to ensure durable and sustainable growth in the post-pandemic future.
He also said that sustainable growth should entail building on macro fundamentals via medium-term investments, sound financial systems and structural reforms.
Pandemic affected developing countries
“Towards this objective, a big push to investment in healthcare, education, innovation, physical and digital infrastructure will be required. We should also continue with further reforms in labour and product markets to encourage competition and dynamism, and to benefit from the pandemic induced opportunities,” he said.
Das said the pandemic affected the poor and the vulnerable the most in emerging and developing countries. He added that “Our endeavour should be to ensure livable and sustainable growth in the post-pandemic future. Restoring the durability of private consumption, which has remained historically the mainstay of aggregate demand will be very crucial going forward”.
Das said that in the post-pandemic world, inclusive growth will require cooperation and participation of all stakeholders, and also added that collaborative effort of various stakeholders is helping accomplish a seemingly difficult task of accelerating the pace of vaccination.
Observing that a major challenge to inclusiveness in the post-pandemic world would come from the fillip to automation provided by the pandemic itself, he said “greater automation would lead to overall productivity gain, but it may also lead to slack in the labour market. Such a scenario calls for significant skilling and training of our workforce”.
He noted that there would be a need to guard against any emergence of the “digital divide”, as digitisation gains speed after the pandemic.