Budget 2022: Govt must take a chance on personal consumption to drive growth, says Rajeev Gowda

The Congress party had been finding fault with the Centre's Covid-19 stimulus packages — five rolled out since May last year — with the main point of criticism being the lack of direct fiscal stimulus to the masses. Ahead of the budget, Rajeev Gowda, who is in charge of the economic research wing of the party is of the view that the Centre needed to give priority to personal consumption as people are hurting across the board. To boost personal consumption, Gowda suggests that the government must lower the taxes on items. He opines that with the lowering of taxes, there could be some impact on the fiscal deficit, which can be managed from receipts from privatisation, but it will ease off a lot of inflationary pressure from the families. Personal consumption in turn will have a possibility to drive growth and the government must take a chance, Gowda believes.