Rating agencies Crisil and Icra on Monday revised down their India growth projections for the current fiscal and the second quarter mainly due to the ripple effect of slowdown in global growth and mixed crop output. Crisil downgraded the India growth forecast by 30 bps to 7 per cent while Icra pegged the economic expansion at 6.5 per cent for the second quarter of FY2022-23. "We have revised down our forecast for real gross domestic product growth to 7 per cent for fiscal 2023 from 7.3 per cent, primarily because of the slowdown in global growth that has started to impact our exports and industrial activity.
There are reports that the government will soon cut income taxes by about Rs 50,000 crore to boost consumption.
Prime Minister Modi, I suggest that, instead, you distribute about one lakh crore rupees per year to the 80 crore poor, which will boost both consumption and economic growth, suggests Kalyan Singhal, McCurdy Professor of Business at the University of Baltimore.
India's central bank has however, forecast an 8.2 per cent economic growth in FY 11.
Weighed down by a weak rupee, the Reserve Bank on Tuesday chose to keep all key interest rates unchanged and asked the government to take urgent steps to reign in the high current account deficit.
The International Monetary Fund (IMF) on Tuesday lowered India's economic growth projection for the current fiscal to 5.9 per cent from 6.1 per cent earlier. Yet India will continue to be the fastest-growing economy in the world. In its annual World Economic Outlook, IMF also lowered the forecast for 2024-25 fiscal (April 2024 to March 2025) to 6.3 per cent from the 6.8 per cent it had predicted in January this year. The growth rate of 5.9 per cent in the 2023-24 fiscal compares to an estimated 6.8 per cent in the previous year.
The World Bank on Thursday forecast a 6.7 per cent growth rate for India by next fiscal as exports and private investment are projected to strengthen and provide a boost to growth.
The commission had earlier projected a 2.5 per cent fall in the farm output due to weak monsoon but expects the drop to be less than that.
The Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) is expected to maintain the status quo on policy rates for the fourth consecutive time in its October 4-6 review meeting. The incremental information available since its last meeting in August suggests that growth and inflation prints for the second quarter (Q2) of financial year 2023-24 (FY24) will exceed the committee's projections. However, the Consumer Price Index (CPI)-based inflation is expected to moderate in the second half (H2) of FY24.
The size of the GDP in the second quarter of 2018-19 is estimated at Rs 33.98 lakh crore, as against Rs 31.72 lakh crore a year ago
In line with other rating agencies and economic organisations, Crisil on Friday forecasted 7.1 per cent economic growth in the wake of an excellent monsoon, but warned that the fiscal deficit would overshoot the target besides lower export growth.
In April, the World Bank had projected India's GDP would grow at 6.1 per cent in the current financial year and at 6.7 per cent the following year.
Among the Sensex firms, ITC, Kotak Mahindra Bank, ICICI Bank, Nestle, Axis Bank, IndusInd Bank, UltraTech Cement, Bajaj Finance, Maruti and HDFC Bank were the major laggards.
Higher for longer' may be the narrative in the developed markets, but interest rates might not stay high for very long in India, with a section of the market expecting rate cuts to begin this year. The six-member Monetary Policy Committee of Reserve Bank of India (RBI) decided to keep interest rates unchanged at 6.5 per cent in the April review - after hiking the policy repo rate in six previous meetings. RBI Governor Shaktikanta Das emphasised that the pause was only for the April policy and that the central bank was ready to act if the situation demanded.
Global credit rating agency Standard & Poor's on Thursday said India's economic growth may fall marginally to 7.5-8 per cent, but inflation outlook remained stable at 5-5.5 per cent in 2007.
Analysts expect modest recovery in Indian economy.
India's budget for the fiscal beginning April focuses on giving a boost to the ongoing economic recovery through a sharp increase in capex spending but is short on major growth-enhancing structural reform announcements, Fitch Ratings said Wednesday. The deficit targets present in the Union budget 2022-23 by Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman on Tuesday "are a bit higher than our forecasts when we affirmed India's 'BBB'/Negative sovereign rating in November," said Jeremy Zook, director and primary sovereign analyst for India, Fitch Ratings. While it was widely expected that the fiscal deficit will be lower than the targeted 6.8 per cent of the GDP in the current fiscal year ending March 31, 2022, Sitharaman put the number at 6.9 per cent.
"Growth is expected to moderate gradually in China... pick up in India, and remain broadly stable in the Asean-5 region."
Bullish over robust fundamentals and improving macroeconomic conditions, industry leader Deepak Parekh on Saturday said India currently has "exceptionally good conditions" in place to aspire for 10 per cent economic growth but much needs to be done to achieve that target.
Benchmark indices--Sensex and Nifty--were 0.7-0.8 per cent higher from the Saturday closing. Among the widely-tracked Nifty 50 stocks, 39 advanced and the rest 11 declined at the opening bell. Among the individual stocks, Cipla, ICICI Bank, Sun Pharma, Power Grid Corp, and Bharti Airtel were the top five gainers, while Asian Paints, Hindustan Unilever, Britania, HDFC Bank, and BPCL the losers, NSE data showed. On Monday, Indian stock exchanges were closed for trading on the occasion of Pran Pratistha of Ram Temple in Ayodhya.
Official data released on Friday said the GDP is estimated to have grown by 5.7 per cent for the April-June period, as against a 4.6 per cent growth notched for the same period year ago.
Top laggards in the Sensex pack included HDFC, ICICI Bank, TCS, HCL Tech, Kotak Bank, Asian Paints, TechM and HUL, dropping up to 2.67 per cent.
Macroeconomic data announcements, global trends and trading activity of foreign investors would guide momentum in the equity market this week, analysts said. Markets ended a five-week losing streak and gained nearly a per cent last week, helped by a sharp rebound on Friday. Last week, the BSE benchmark jumped 500.65 points or 0.77 per cent and the Nifty gained 169.5 points or 0.87 per cent.
The July-September quarter GDP numbers are due on November 30.
While the economy seems to be on a firm growth path, the fight against inflation is not over yet. Shaktikanta Das seems to be in no hurry. After playing well through a five-year Test match, he doesn't want to get out hit wicket, observes Tamal Bandyopadhyay.
Weaker demand for Indian exports and higher financing costs will lead to a deceleration in India's gross domestic product (GDP) growth rate to 7.9 per cent in 2008, the International Monetary Fund has said.The IMF's growth projections for India are in line with other estimates, including that of the Asian Development Bank, which pegged the 2008-09 growth at 8 per cent.
The GST revenues for August 2023 have shown a growth of 11 per cent year on year due to increased compliance and less evasion, Revenue secretary Sanjay Malhotra said on Friday. The collection from Goods and Services Tax (GST) was Rs 1,43,612 crore in August 2022. "Roughly numbers are in the range of 11 per cent year on year growth as in earlier months," Malhotra told reporters.
The overall FPI inflows should move into the range of $15-20 billion in fiscal 2017 with equity dominating with $10-15 billion and debt with $5 billion
Stating that India's economic stimulus was not adequate, Banerjee said, the measures did not increase consumption spending of lower income people as the government was not willing to put money in the hands of the low income population.
The chief statistician feels there should be a rebound after companies integrate and adopt the GST system
Fitch Ratings says in a report published on Thursday that the spillover effects of a weaker rupee have not significantly hurt India's creditworthiness, and hence would not trigger any rating action as this point.
With the government claiming that the economy has been growing robustly and the Opposition refuting these claims, the common man is none the wiser, says Rajeev Sharma.
Fitch on Tuesday affirmed India's sovereign rating at 'BBB-' with a stable outlook, on robust growth and resilient external finances, but said weak public finances remain a challenge. India's rating has been unchanged at 'BBB-', which is the lowest investment grade, since August 2006. "Fitch Ratings has affirmed India's Long-Term Foreign-Currency Issuer Default Rating (IDR) at 'BBB-' with a Stable Outlook," it said in a statement, adding strong growth potential is a key supporting factor for the sovereign rating.
Indian economy is likely to end this fiscal with over 6 per cent growth backed by industrial recovery and impressive performance of the service sector, according to ICICI Bank chief executive K V Kamath.
The US Federal Reserve on Wednesday (local time) raised interest rates by 75 basis points (bps) or three-quarters of a percentage point in the boldest move since 1994.
India appears poised to sustain its growth in a more durable way than before with the economy carrying the momentum from FY23 into the current fiscal year, the Annual Economic Review for 2022-23 released by the finance ministry on Thursday said. However, the report cautioned that escalation of geopolitical stress, enhanced volatility in global financial systems, sharp price correction in global stock markets, a high magnitude of El-Nino impact, and modest trade activity and FDI inflows, are factors that could constrain the pace of growth. "Should these developments deepen and dampen growth in the subsequent quarters, the external sector may challenge India's growth outlook for FY24," the finance ministry said.
'The private sector believes that some enablers in labour-intensive sectors like apparel, toys, tourism, and media retail, can unlock a lot of jobs.'
Economic think-tank National Council of Applied Economic Research expects India's Gross Domestic Product growth to decelerate to 8.3 per cent during current fiscal
Indian economy is set for a 'goldilocks' period -- used to describe a timeframe of high growth and low inflation -- while it can become Asia's fastest growing economy in 2016, Japanese financial major Nomura said.
To a specific question on the change in RBI's stance from "neutral" to "accommodative", Das said it means that there will not be any rate hike from here on.
Moody's Investors Service on Wednesday raised India's economic growth estimate for 2023 to 5.5 per cent from 4.8 per cent pegged earlier, on the back of a sharp increase in capital expenditure in the Budget and a resilient economic momentum. It however revised downwards India's growth estimate for 2022 to 6.8 per cent from 7 per cent pegged in November last year. In its February update to Global Macro Outlook 2023-24, Moody's raised the baseline 2023 real growth projections "meaningfully" for several G20 economies, including the US, Canada, the Euro area, India, Russia, Mexico, and Turkiye, accounting for a stronger end to 2022.
