Hyderabad: While there is no doubt that the ongoing coronavirus pandemic will take a huge economic toll on the country this year, a new research report suggests that residents of Delhi, Telangana, Haryana and Goa would be the worst hit in terms of monetary impact.
According to the SBI Ecowrap report released on Monday, a person living in Delhi is estimated to lose an average of Rs 87,223 in FY21 on account of the loss in output due to the coronavirus outbreak. This is much higher than the all-India average of Rs 27,000 per person as estimated by the report.
Meanwhile, an average resident of Telangana may lose Rs 67,883 in FY21, while Haryana residents are likely to take a per-capita hit of Rs 52,696.
The per-capita loss is the highest for Goa residents at Rs 1.05 lakh, while it is around Rs 45,000 for people of both Tamil Nadu and Gujarat.
Surprisingly, the report estimates Bihar to be one of the least-hit states, with per-capital loss of only Rs 8,739. Assam, at a per-capita loss of Rs 9,800, is a close second.
Notably, the state-wise per-capita impact is based on the estimated total loss in gross state domestic product (GSDP) in FY21 as calculated by the SBI Ecowrap report.
“Using the bottom-up approach, we estimated that total GSDP loss due to COVID-19 for states stands at Rs 38 lakh crore, which is 16.9% of total GSDP.”
State-wise analysis indicates that top 10 states accounted for 73.8% of total GDP loss, with Maharashtra contributing 14.2% of total loss followed by Tamil Nadu (9.2%) and Uttar Pradesh (8.2%), the report added.
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The report also revised its estimates for real GDP degrowth in Q1 to 16.5%, a little less steep than a contraction of around 20% projected earlier.
“The ugly part of Covid-19 on economic growth is that, as per our estimates, all the four quarters of FY21 will exhibit negative real GDP growth and decline of full-year growth is likely be in double digits. However, the interesting part to see how NSO (National Statistical Office) will report the data on 31 August 2020,” the report noted. The NSO is scheduled to release GDP estimate for Q1 of FY21 on 31 August.
The report also questioned NSO’s consumer price index (CPI) computation for July and estimated the actual retail inflation figure to be around 7.5% during the month, much higher than the 6.9% originally announced.
“Lockdown and non-availability of data have led to NSO estimating the various components of CPI inflation. However, this has been a pure statistical exercise by NSO that underreports the headline CPI,” the report said, adding: “In principle, we need to account for changes in consumption habits during lockdown as services are not getting consumed.”
“The bottom line of such is that a negative GDP and a jump in inflation are only pushing back real consumption and hopes of recovery are fading,” the report noted.
(ETV Bharat Report)
