Investment in healthcare, infrastructure key to ensure sustainable growth post Covid: RBI governor

NEW DELHI: Reserve Bank of India (RBI) governor on Wednesday highlighted the need for higher investment in healthcare and infrastructure sectors to ensure sustainable growth in the post pandemic world.

Addressing AIMA's 48th national management convention, the RBI governor said that investment in healthcare education, digital and physical infrastructure is vital to ensure sustainable growth and generate employment opportunities.

"Our endeavor should be to ensure durable and sustainable growth in the post pandemic future. Sustainable growth should entail building on micro fundamentals via medium-term investments, sound financial systems and structural reforms," Das said.

Emphasising on the need to focus on labour and market reforms, the RBI governor noted that the Covid-19 pandemic has affected poor and vulnerable more in developing countries. He said that global recovery
has been uneven across countries and sectors.

"Advanced economies have normalised faster on back of a higher pace of vaccination and larger policy support. Emerging and developing economies lagging due to slow access to vaccines and binding constraints on policy support," Das added.

In addition, the RBI governor also said that the world is witnessing initial signs of recovery from the impact of the pandemic.

"Covid-19 is a watershed event in our era. It has caused widespread devastation of lives and livelihoods. There are very few parallels to this shock," he said.

In India too, he said, Covid-19 has impacted many dynamic sectors of the economy and propelled them to opt for greater adoption of new digital technologies.

"The Covid pandemic has provided a new impetus to technology-driven companies such as fintech, edtech and healthtech which are likely to see increased funding activity in the coming years," said Das.

At the same time, the Indian financial system has transformed rapidly to support the needs of economy," he said adding that recovery has been uneven among different sectors.