India recorded 1.33 lakh cases in the last 24 hours. To declare that India’s second covid wave is waning, might be too early to state. According to the latest data released, it can be noted that second wave of the pandemic had an adverse crippling effect on the economy, so much so that urban unemployment rose to 18%.
However, according to Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), despite being hit by a devastating second wave of the COVID-19 pandemic, India will positively reach its 2019 financial year gross domestic product per capita levels by the end of the financial year 2021. This was mentioned in the latest data that was recently released by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. But it is to be noted that India, even before its pandemic debacle, was growing at a slow rate of 4%.
In its report, the OECD had mapped the time period it will take for each G-20 nations to reach their pre-GDP-per capita levels before the COVID-19 pandemic had struck. For its calculations, it took a base of per-capita GDP as on December 31, 2019.
As per the OECD data, countries which have already conquered this milestone are Turkey, China, South Korea, Russia and the United States. Thus, these countries have already reached their pre-pandemic GDP levels as of June 1, 2021. Additionally, according to the report, countries like Germany, India and Indonesia will reach their pre pandemic levels by the end of this year. But some other countries like Saudi Arabia, Britain, Brazil, and France will take longer to reach their pre pandemic level.
The countries to reach this milestone the last are South Africa and Argentina. It will take these countries the longest to reach their December 2019 per-capita GDP levels, at five years and 6.75 years respectively.
As per the GDP data released by the National Statistical Office on May 31, India’s real per-capita GDP for 2020-21 fiscal year fell 8.2 percent, compared with a 3 percent rise in 2019-20.