Coronavirus outbreak to have limited impact on India, says RBI Governor

Only a couple of sectors in India are likely to see some disruptions but alternatives are being explored to overcome those issues, he said

The coronavirus outbreak will have a limited impact on India but the global GDP and trade will definitely get affected due to the large size of the Chinese economy, RBI Governor Shaktikanta Das has said. Only a couple of sectors in India are likely to see some disruptions but alternatives are being explored to overcome those issues, he said.

The deadly coronavirus has brought a large part of the world’s second-largest economy China to a standstill and its impact has been felt across industries. India’s pharmaceutical and electronic manufacturing sectors are dependent on China for inputs and they may be impacted, Das told PTI in an interview here. “It is definitely an issue which needs to be closely monitored by every policymaker whether in India or any other country. Every policymaker, every monetary authority needs to keep a very close watch. So coronavirus issue needs to be closely watched,” he said.

A similar problem, perhaps on a lower scale, occurred last time during the outbreak of Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) in 2003, he said adding that the Chinese economy had slowed down by about 1 per cent during that time. At the time of SARS outbreak, China was the sixth-largest economy and accounted for only 4.2 per cent of the world’s GDP. While, the Asian giant is now the world’s second-largest economy, accounting for 16.3 per cent of the global GDP, therefore, any slowdown in the Chinese economy would impact the global economy…