Infrastructure-focused fiscal stimulus will be key to India's recovery.

Souma Ray, Director - Haulotte India Pvt. Ltd

What are the key continuing challenges which you foresee impacting the economy as a whole, and the Access Equipment sector?

Our economy has been very deeply impacted because of the unavoidable series of lockdowns across the country owing to spread of Covid19. Although slow easing of restrictions has been done over the past 3 months, yet the pace of activities is much below pre Covid levels. Coupled to this are the challenges of movement and travel across the country as trains and public transport are limited. Lack of liquidity in the market continues to be an impediment.

The Access Equipment industry have faced a severe brunt. CAPEX has been withheld or postponed. The rental sector has faced great difficulties with their fleet of deployed machines having come to a standstill for over 4 months coupled with their customers not paying the rentals during the lockdown period. Further the migration of the labour during the lockdown period made them lose their operators and technical staff, thus putting their businesses is further trouble.

What further measures should be undertaken by the states / central government?

Experts are indicating a V shaped recovery for the country from the drastic fall. Early signs of optimism is evident across the high frequency indicators of the economy. Recovery is dependent on government investments since private sector is not in good shape. All scenario indicate growth to rebound, though much will depend on investments, consumer spending, monsoon, exports, global growth and second wave of Covid impact.

How do you see the impact on the investment scenario in infra projects?

Even as economic activities have slowly picked up pace with relaxation in lockdown norms, infrastructure-focused fiscal stimulus will be key to India's recovery. The government had already embarked upon significant monetary and fiscal stimuli from March 2020. Now with the right policies, regulation, collaboration and investment, we can clear the obstacles to economic advancement. However, we need to note that large infrastructure projects would recover slowly owing as labour and financing issues persist.

Post pandemic era how do you envision the transformation of manufacturing processes, marketing and supply chain management, especially with the advent of disruptive technologies?

The pandemic situation has shown us the stark reality that overdependence on any one country for sourcing raw materials and components can't be the thing for the future. I strongly feel that the government's initiative of self-reliance or 'Atmanirbhar Bharat' is the right step in this direction. Going forward for sure the manufacturing processes, marketing and supply chain management shall get more aligned in finding suitable alternatives for sourcing in order to avoid any unforeseen disruptions.

What is the current scenario in terms of R&D?

At Haulotte we continue to innovate and are well on track with our plan of launching new models which would be state of the art, environmentally friendly, easy to use and maintain. We have series of exciting launches lined up commencing end of this year and through next year.

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