Open to further stimulus, assessing impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on FY21: Nirmala Sitharaman

Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman also said the Centre would come out with fresh growth and budgetary estimates for the COVID-19 pandemic-hit 2020-21.

Arup Roychoudhury

October 20, 2020 / 11:10 IST

26 Aug, 2025 12:21

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Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman said on October 19 that the government is open to another round of stimulus measures and that the Centre will come out with fresh growth and budgetary estimates for the COVID-19 pandemic-hit 2020-21.

"I am not closed to the option of further stimulus package. Every time we have announced one, it has been after much deliberation and aimed at specific sections. If there is a need, further stimulus is an option I am open to,” Sitharaman said at the launch of 15^th Finance Commission Chairman NK Singh’s autobiography.

“We have only now started doing some sort of assessment (of the economy and budget numbers). We have had inputs now which are very different from July. Sometime, we will have to come out with a statement, whether I do it in public or Parliament is what we have to decide,” she said.

The Finance Ministry has begun the exercise of preparing the 2021-22 Union Budget. The first part of the process is coming up with revised estimates for the current fiscal year, in this case FY21. It remains to be seen if the finance ministry would present fresh GDP numbers for the current year before the Union Budget for next year.

COVID-19 Vaccine

Frequently Asked Questions

How does a vaccine work?

A vaccine works by mimicking a natural infection. A vaccine not only induces immune response to protect people from any future COVID-19 infection, but also helps quickly build herd immunity to put an end to the pandemic. Herd immunity occurs when a sufficient percentage of a population becomes immune to a disease, making the spread of disease from person to person unlikely. The good news is that SARS-CoV-2 virus has been fairly stable, which increases the viability of a vaccine.

How many types of vaccines are there?

There are broadly four types of vaccine — one, a vaccine based on the whole virus (this could be either inactivated, or an attenuated [weakened] virus vaccine); two, a non-replicating viral vector vaccine that uses a benign virus as vector that carries the antigen of SARS-CoV; three, nucleic-acid vaccines that have genetic material like DNA and RNA of antigens like spike protein given to a person, helping human cells decode genetic material and produce the vaccine; and four, protein subunit vaccine wherein the recombinant proteins of SARS-COV-2 along with an adjuvant (booster) is given as a vaccine.

What does it take to develop a vaccine of this kind?

Vaccine development is a long, complex process. Unlike drugs that are given to people with a diseased, vaccines are given to healthy people and also vulnerable sections such as children, pregnant women and the elderly. So rigorous tests are compulsory. History says that the fastest time it took to develop a vaccine is five years, but it usually takes double or sometimes triple that time.

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