Karnataka govt invites experts to offer ideas to mitigate COVID-19 impact

Karnataka government has invited experts to offer suggestions, new ideas, and suggest projects, strategies and work plans to help it formulate an integrated strategy to mitigate social and ecomic impact of COVID-19 and promote a healthy and safe revival of  State.

According to a concept te put out for discussion, a uniform revival policy for whole state is t possible as impact on ecomy varies across regions and sectors.  estimation of impact across  ministrative divisions/ districts is essential to frame  redressal policy and programmes, it said.

Planning Department, with help of Directorate of Ecomics and Statistics (DES) and Data Analytics Centre and with help of interns and faculty support, is trying to design projects to conduct impact analysis across divisions on various issues, concept te said.

What is required is immediate assessment of  current situation and, with new ideas, design short, medium and long-term policies, it said. During lockdown period,production almost come to a standstill in state, whose GDP at current prices is estimated (2019-20) at 15,50,297 crore and aver per day works out to be Rs 4300 crore.

It is assumed that loss would continue for a longer period if period is extended and even after that, it will require some time for revival.  greatest loss is in service sector which is a major contributor to State GDP (66 per cent) and also to employment (47.44 per cent); or sector affected is industry/manufacturing contributing 22.8 per cent to State GDP.

production in agriculture sector is comparatively less affected as Rabi harvesting season is over. But horticulture, floriculture and allied activities have suffered a great loss due to delink from marketing chain , concept te said.  contribution of Bangalore Urban to State ecomy is about 25 per cent to 30 per cent (very low estimation).

Hence revival of Bangalore urban ecomy is essential.  Bangalore urban ecomy is mainly dependent on migrant labour and refore revival depends on bringing back people for work to meet labour demand. A policy/programme needs to be formulated, it said. A quick survey of migrant workers and workers in informal sector is being taken up by DES (Planning Department) to assess nature of se migrants and quantum of job requirements.