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Campus Connect Series
Hyderabad, 4th August 2022: IMT Hyderabad hosted a speaker session on “Emerging Economic Trends” on the 4th of August 2022. The session was part of the Campus Connect Series and was organized by the General Management Area. The speaker for the session was Mr. Kunal Kumar Kundu, India Economist, Société Générale. Mr. Kundu is one of the widely quoted Economists in National and International Media with over 20+ years of experience analyzing financial markets with companies like Roubini Global Economics, Infosys, and FITCH Ratings India.
Sanjana Nahata, PGDM (Finance) student, commenced the speaker session by welcoming the guest. Mr. Kundu, who started the session by posing the question, “what is the issue that our economy is currently facing?” After a few responses from the second-year PGDM students, Mr. Kundu highlighted the Misery Index. He explained the fluctuations in the misery index during the recent years due to the pandemic and demonetization.
Mr. Kundu then talked about inflation and unemployment. He asked the students their thoughts about inflation and why it is shooting up. He explained how demand and supply play a massive role in inflation and that western countries experience more significant inflation than India as those countries provide tremendous financial support to the citizens, resulting in a high resignation rate in the west part of the world. The speaker further gave an example of the U.S government sending cheques to the house of people who are not in jobs and are not looking for employment because of this support.
The speaker further highlighted the MSME sector as the primary employment provider in India., however, due to multiple COVID hits, the smaller companies lost their market share, which resulted in higher job losses. He also explained that the large companies have deleveraged their loans and are in a healthy position for a comeback. However, he also stated that the demand in the Indian market is not enough, due to which inflation is shooting up. He further talked about how policymakers in India were trying to control the inflation rate in May 2022; they reduced the central excise duty on petrol and diesel, due to which people anticipated that the inflation would come down from 7%, but the kerosene and LPG price increased resulting in higher household expenditure.
Mr. Kundu advised the students that they should have a basic understanding of economics as finance and economics go hand in hand. According to the speaker, the best asset class one can invest in themselves only, so one needs to keep learning and exploring new things as the dynamics in the market are changing with rapid speed.
Further, Mr. Kundu answered various questions put forward by the students regarding the national and world economy. The session was concluded with a vote of thanks by V Thyagrajan, PGDM (Finance) student, and a memento was presented to the honourable speaker by Prof. (Dr.) Venkata Chakrapani C, Dean (Academics), IMT Hyderabad.
