The August 2020 issue of Thinking Aloud focuses on “COVID-19 Crisis and South Asian Responses through Stimulus Packages”. The first-page article titled “An anatomy of stimulus package in Bangladesh” emphasises that while Bangladesh’s stimulus package, in proportion to GDP, is much higher than those of South Asian and Southeast Asian countries, large stimulus packages are likely to be ineffective if they are associated with poor execution, unplanned allocation of funds, and weak accountability. The article highlights that all these three issues are extremely important for the effective implementation of the stimulus packages in Bangladesh. The second and third pages of this issue present three more articles. The article titled “Sri Lanka’s economic recovery: COVID-19 and beyond” assesses the elevated challenges faced by Sri Lanka on the economic front, despite relatively successful handling of the health hazard. The article concludes that a robust fiscal and debt sustainability path will be required to mitigate the effects of the pandemic on the Sri Lankan economy. The article on “Stimulus package in Pakistan in the context of COVID-19” discusses Pakistan’s response to the pandemic, the challenges hindering such response, and the policy recommendations to mitigate the challenges. Lack of data on marginal communities, lack of health expenditure and the resulting deficiency in public health infrastructure, and lack of strong and autonomous local administrations are the major challenges faced by the country during the ongoing pandemic. The article titled “Decoding India’s ‘Atma Nirbhar’ fiscal stimulus package: Hits and misses” discusses specifically the ‘Atma Nirbhar’ package announced as part of the stimulus packages announced in India to recover from the recessionary effects of COVID-19. The article analyses the package in details and points out the necessity of direct cash transfer for the revival of the economy along with expenditure for healthcare infrastructure which has been absent in the abovementioned package. The fourth page mentions the upcoming SANEM International Conference in October and presents summaries of the SANEM events occurred in July 2020.
