Economic Resilience During Covid-19 in South-Asia

The world witnessed its first case of novel coronavirus in December, 2019. To reduce the effects of novel coronavirus, many countries imposed national lockdowns. Covid 19 has already proved itself to one of the biggest crises after World War II and the Great Depression of the 1930s (ILO, 2020). The pandemic has claimed millions of lives across the globe. Objective of this paper is to evaluate short-term financial and budgetary responses on the part of governments of the region and the way such responses have impacted the respective countries. The primary focus has been kept on India, Sri Lanka and Nepal. The reason for focusing on the aforementioned countries is the number of covid cases and mortality rate. Common trends of resilience steps include extending financial help to vulnerable along with food supply, extended period for tax payment and reduced interest on loans. The steps taken by the SA governments may appear insignificant compared to other western countries but the steps need to be evaluated in the financial context of the region. Financial resilience steps taken by SA governments to combat the pandemic; has been observed to be mostly reactive adapters. The initiatives are short term fiscal responses with little thought behind. It is true that countries of the region have reopened their economies quickly as growth rates were falling but were forced to enter into another lockdown in April 2021. Since then, all countries have concentrated on mass vaccination initiatives which appears to be a better way to deal with pandemics. The paper analyses various resilience steps taken in South Asia at different time frames of the pandemic.