While the essential items such as food are available in the market and the supply chain uninterrupted, non-essential items are running out of stock in the market due to the COVID-19 crisis. The Economic Affairs Minister, during the meet the press session yesterday, said that the government have started facilitating the import of non-essentials as well.
As an import driven country, many non-essential items became scarce by the day after the lockdown in India. However, Economic Affairs Minister Loknath Sharma says the government is planning to facilitate the import of non-essentials as much as possible.
“Most of our people used to get their non-essentials from Jaigaon. Jaigaon was totally locked down. It was in fact so locked down that none of the shops was open. That is why in the beginning non-essential commodities were limited in the market and it is not because whether we are interested to import non-essentials or not, it is because it was not available at the source. Even now, we are having problems. Some of the mega industries in India falls under the red zone. So we have no authority to open them. But whatever is coming in, essentials, there is no way that they blocked because it is essential there too. But, non-essentials are coming, we have allowed and hopefully, I think even in India where we bring most of our non-essentials from, will open slowly for more production and we will be able to make it available in the market,” said Loknath Sharma, the Economic Affairs Minister.
Lyonpo added that since protocols will be in place while importing non-essentials, it won’t be as smooth as in the past.
Tshering Dendup
