00:04we need to reduce our use of petrol and diesel during the coronavirus pandemic we worked from
00:11home and did online meetings it's the need of the hour to resume those measures
00:18ladies of course Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi they're appealing to citizens to cut fuel
00:23use and also saying COVID era strategies such as work from home might need to be brought back
00:28for more let's get to Bloomberg South Asia economy editor Richie Bhatia so Richie some
00:33very interesting comments there from Prime Minister Modi what is what's behind this
00:41absolutely Paul very interesting comments coming in from Prime Minister Narendra Modi he's asked
00:45to get back some of the COVID era measures asking people to defer their purchases of gold defer their
00:51foreign holidays and this is of course coming in as we're seeing you know twin pressures on the fiscal
00:57and on the current account only increasing as a result of the crisis that's playing out in the
01:03Middle East we've already seen rupee hitting record lows one after the other India's foreign exchange
01:08reserves also declining in fact the lowest in a month that we've seen as of May 1st and you know
01:17this is a sort of a signal we want to take these comments with a lot of seriousness given the
01:22fact
01:22that so far the government has been you know governments state-run companies have been absorbing
01:30the losses on fuel prices so we do expect some sort of a fuel price hike coming in in the
01:36days to come
01:37having said that one also needs to see that this is a sign to say that it's very becoming very
01:44hard
01:45to absorb any kind of pressures on the fiscal and on the current account side as far as the government
01:53is concerned this is a result of a lot of conversations that have happened between India's
01:59finance ministry and the Prime Minister's office and the Prime Minister in fact urging the citizens at
02:05this point of time you know these are these are these measures that the Prime Minister is talking
02:11about is not they are not mandatory but they are definitely a very important signal of what's to
02:18come and also shows that the government is finding it very hard to fend off the pressure on the
02:23currency and foreign exchange reserves
Comments