Relax FCRA norms, expand GST sops on COVID-19 imports to prepare for future waves: CII president

T.V. Narendran said the Centre should do whatever it takes to help producers, including issuing confirmed orders and advance payments, to help inoculate India at a faster pace.

Larger businesses in several COVID-19-affected sectors may make it through the pandemic’s deleterious effects, but smaller companies may not survive as income and job losses pile up and weaken demand, said Tata Steel chief and Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) president T.V. Narendran, seeking urgent measures to pre-empt a meltdown. “Most families have spent more on medical expenditure than they planned, and many families are impacted by job losses or salary freezes or cuts. So there would be a tendency to postpone expenditure, just to deal with the current situation,” Mr Narendran told The Hindu. He recommended temporary cuts in the Goods and Services Tax (GST) rates for the worst-affected contact-intensive sectors and consumer durables to spur demand. To be better prepared for future COVID-19 waves, the government must relax the Foreign Contribution Regulation Act (FCRA) norms that are holding up global aid flows and ground level relief efforts of well-meaning NGOs. Critical COVID-19 supplies imported by industry and others during the peaking of the second wave, should also be exempted from GST levies.