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Economic package measures 'deeply disappointing', says Kerala FM Thomas Isaac

During an elaborate press conference today, FM Sitharaman announced six postulates to infuse liquidity into the MSME sector.

May 13, 2020 / 20:54 IST

Taking potshots at the blueprint of the Rs 20 lakh crore economic stimulus laid out on May 13 by Nirmala Sitharaman, Kerala Finance Minister Thomas Isaac dubbed it as "deeply disappointing".

In a sharply-worded tweet, Isaac said, "If the first day's package of Union FM is a fair sample, the Rs 20 lakh stimulus is going to be deeply disappointing."

"The actual outflow resources directly from the budget is only around ₹30,000 crore. At least the interest payment of MSME sector during the moratorium could have been waved," he added.

During an elaborate press conference today, FM Sitharaman announced six postulates to infuse liquidity into the MSME sector.

These included collateral-free automatic loans worth Rs 3 lakh crore for standard MSMEs, and creating a fund of funds for infusing about Rs 50,000 crore as equity into MSMEs.

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In addition, she also announced change in definition of MSMEs by revising the investment limits upwards.

Sitharaman gave a tranche of 15 measures so as to elucidate the distribution of corpus in the Rs 20 lakh crore economic stimulus announced by Prime Minister Narendra Modi in his address to the nation on March 12.

While announcing the financial aid to rescue the economy reeling under the impact of coronavirus, PM Modi had said that the amount is approximately equal to 10 percent of India's GDP.

The Rs 20 lakh crore stimulus includes packages worth nearly Rs 7-8 lakh crore already announced by the Finance Ministry and the Reserve Bank of India (RBI).

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Moneycontrol News
first published: May 13, 2020 08:54 pm

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