Vaccinating everyone above 18 to cost just 0.36% of GDP

NEW DELHI: As the Centre government recently announced a liberalised and accelerated phase III strategy of vaccination, ratings agency India Ratings and Research said that vaccinating everyone in India above 18 in the phase III of the inoculation drive will cost only about 0.36 per cent of the GDP,

According to reports, all persons above 18 years of age will be eligible to get Covid-19 vaccine doses from May 1. Consequently, the total size of the population that will now be eligible for vaccination would be 841.95 million out of the total population of 1,332.69 million.

As per Ind-Ra's calculations, vaccinating the targeted group may cost Rs 671.93 billion, of which the Union government is expected to spend Rs 208.70 billion and state governments together will incur Rs 463.23 billion.

"Of the total requirement of vaccines, a sum of Rs 50.90 billion has already been spent for procuring 214 million doses; thus, the remaining amount required to be spent for procuring 1,554 million doses would be Rs 621.03 billion."

According to Ind-Ra, Rs 671.93 billion and works out to be just 0.36 per cent of GDP. The analysis says that the if the expenditure splited between the Union government and state governments, then the fiscal impact on the union budget would be 0.12 per cent of GDP and on the state budgets would 0.24 per cent of GDP

Besides, Ind-Ra said given the magnitude of the problem and the economic cost the second wave of Covid-19 pandemic is likely to inflict on the economy, "it is too small an amount".