Economic Survey 2019-20: Highlights | 01 Feb 2020

The Economic Survey 2019-20 has been tabled in the Parliament by the Union Minister for Finance.

The theme of Economic Survey 2019-20 is "India’s aspiration of #Economy@5trillion with its theme of #WealthCreation".

Economic Survey

The Economic Survey is a report that the government presents on the state of the economy in the past one year, the key challenges it anticipates, and their possible solutions.
- It is a crucial document as it provides a detailed, official version of the government’s take on the country’s economic condition.
The document is prepared by the Economic Division of the Department of Economic Affairs (DEA) under the guidance of the Chief Economic Adviser (CEA), currently Dr Krishnamurthy Subramanian.
It needs to be noted that the government is not constitutionally bound to present the Economic Survey or to follow the recommendations that are made in it.

The Survey makes an attempt to craft a framework of policies that can foster wealth creation in India, which in turn, would set the economy firmly on an upward growth trajectory.
The Survey identifies several levers for furthering Wealth Creation, which are:
- Grassroot Entrepreneurs: Entrepreneurship as a strategy to fuel productivity growth and wealth creation.
- Competitive Market: Promote 'pro-business' policies that unleash the power of competitive markets to generate wealth as against 'pro-crony' policies that may favour incumbent private interests.
- Remove anachronistic government interventions: Eliminate policies that undermine markets through government intervention, even where it is not necessary.
- Assemble in India: Integrate 'Assemble in India' into 'Make in India' to focus on labour intensive exports and thereby create jobs at a large scale. India should focus on other labour intensive sectors such as textile, clothing, footwear and toys.
- Banking: Efficiently scale up the banking sector to become proportionate to the Indian economy and track the health of the shadow banking sector (NBFCs).
- Privatization: Use privatization to foster efficiency and thus bolster the case for aggressive disinvestment of CPSEs.

Market Enables Wealth Creation

The Survey lays stress on the importance of bringing an openness in the market that leads to wealth creation, in turn, boosting the economic activity through increased investment.
India’s historical dominance on the global economy is the result of two factors: ‘Invisible Hand of Market’ and ‘Trust’. E.g. Indian economy returned to high growth trajectory post economic liberalisation.
Trust is a public good that increases with use.

The Survey makes an attempt to relate economics to the common person using something that an individual encounters every day - a plate of food i.e a Thali.
Affordability of Thalis vis-à-vis a day’s pay of a worker has improved over time, indicating improved welfare of the common person.