When push comes to shove: GoI does not shy away from doing what it takes

“Mood of doom and gloom is not going to help anyone. I am not saying we maintain a Panglossian outlook and smile at everything — I don’t expect people to smile away difficulty — but a mood of doom and gloom will not help anyone,”

-Shaktikanta Das
Governor, RBI

Desperate times call for desperate measures.

This has never been more than in recent times. With India staring at the incoming wave of a global slowdown, the two biggest forces – Ministry of Finance and Reserve Bank of India have decided to keep their long-standing feud aside and attempt to insulate India through growth-inducing measures, reforms, and policies.

Over the past couple of weeks, Nirmala Sitharaman had announced a slew of big-bang measures including rollback of the controversial surcharge on equity capital gains, intent to recapitalise public sector banks, dispose angel tax, fast-track GST refunds while the generally conservative RBI decided to move out of its comfort zone and pay out a surprisingly large sum of INR 1.76 lakh crore.

While these measures are expected to be instrumental in the economy, Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman chose to not wait for more data and in fact acted proactively by calling for another press conference late Friday this week with another set of surprises. Following are a few highlights of the announcements made during the press conference.

Key takeaways for investors:

We continue to maintain a stance that now is a good time to start accumulating through systematic plans with a medium-term horizon. The short-term outlook for Indian equities is that markets are expected to be highly volatile in the short term and offer massive wealth creation opportunity for investors willing to ride the tide and participate in the imminent recovery. Investors with a moderate investor profile and time horizon of 5+ years can choose to explore top highlighted funds in the multi-cap category.