Chongqing — To what extent the novel coronavirus outbreak called COVID-19 will affect China’s economy has become a hot topic of international conversation recently. In an exclusive interview with iChongqing yesterday, V. K. Mishra, the Executive Vice Chairman of India China Trade Center (ICTC) shows strong confidence in the recovery of trade between India and China and is happy to take part in the in-coming business event in Chongqing.

There are temporary impacts on trade between China and India 

"From February 1 to 14, many flights are not operating between China and India. Due to this, the Indian electronics industry, mobile industry, auto parts industry, and pharmaceutical industry, all of which get their materials mainly from China, suddenly started to be affected by the outbreak," said Mishra.

"This is a season of trade fair where most of the day trade fairs in India have had big participation from Chinese companies," Mishra told us. "We have started missing seriously our Chinese partners at the just-concluded New Delhi Expo of Auto Parts."

When talking about how the ITCT responded to this situation, Mishra said, "first of all, we have contacted the embassies in both countries. Then we have also connected with the Chinese chamber of commerce as like the China Council for the Promotion of International Trade (CCPIT) and the China Chamber of Commerce of Metals Minerals & Chemicals Importers & Exporters (CCCMC). We have shared the real situation in China and India. And we're still working on the next step."

China has taken outstanding measures to prevent the spread of the outbreak

When talking about China's government's measures to cope with the break,  Mishra said, "I was very impressed with the actions and remedial measures taken by the government of China to control this kind of big epidemic. And especially when we have heard about, several thousand people have been provided with the best possible medical measures in spite of so many big numbers of the people were affected by the virus in Hubei province."

He also said, "we are very comfortable that China's government has taken outstanding measures where they have tried to save as much as possible the human losses and to control this virus as much as possible to contain within our limited cities are within the limited area of China. They have really done very well to restrict this virus to go out of China and to other countries. Because as we know, the Chinese people are the biggest traveling people in the world because of business as well as for traveling. So, this was very important for the government of China to control this virus contained in the minimum area as much as possible. Overall, everyone is very happy and impressed with this action of the government of China.”

Trade between China and India will resume soon after the outbreak ends

"In the short term to medium term, we afraid the business is going to be affected seriously. And what we can do to recover from this, that is, first of all, we need to take care of our health and we need to take care of our relationship. " Mishra said.

Mishra believes that as soon as the normal life resumes between two countries in terms of traveling, flights, entrance restrictions  removed from other countries, the trade between China and India will resume soon.

"And then we should try our best to resume the business which we were doing before the Chinese new year's holidays. Moreover,  this year is a very special year because we are celebrating 70 years of our relations between the two countries. So, we have planned many events this year. So, we may lose 1.5 or two months during this epidemic period, we will try to cop up after the normalcy as much as possible." Mishra said.

Form the view of many foreign experts and international organizations, the long-term impact of the outbreak on China's economy is inevitable but limited.

Gerry Rice, the Spokesperson for the International Monetary Fund (IMF), believes some of the adverse effects caused by the epidemic on the Chinese economy will be temporary. The economy can be restored when the outbreak subsides, and related economic activities resume normal operation.

"The Chinese authorities have policy space to respond and have announced a sizeable injection of liquidity, which should help mitigate the costs to economic growth,” tweeted The World Bank on February 3.