Capital expenditure to support recovery

The government will ensure that capital expenditure will continue to support the economic growth momentum regained after the third wave of COVID-19, Chief Economic Advisor Anantha Nageswaran said on Friday. The government has taken various steps - including lowering taxes, the continuation of privatisation, setting up institutions for sequestering bad loans and managing them, and launching an asset monetisation drive to strengthen the real economy. The government is committed to making sure that the growth impulse that we have regained after the third wave is not surrendered, given the current sense of uncertainty among the private sector participants, both in banking and the non-banking world. In the previous fiscal, the government spent 5.92 lakh crore, while the capital expenditure was set at Rs 6 lakh crore. He said that the biggest real economic intervention is when the government is able to execute the capital expenditure of Rs 7.5 lakh crore for the current financial year. He said that the banking industry has a very important role to play in sustaining the current growth scenario and turning the country's relative advantage into a source of absolute growth advantage over other nations.