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LATEST NEWS UPDATES | DeMolished India's top rank -Jayanta Roy Chowdhury and R Suryamurthy

DeMolished India's top rank -Jayanta Roy Chowdhury and R Suryamurthy

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published Published on Jun 1, 2017   modified Modified on Jun 1, 2017
-The Telegraph

New Delhi: India is no longer the fastest-growing major economy in the world: it has lost its bragging rights to China.

The Central Statistics Office (CSO) today put out its provisional estimates on national income that showed real GDP growth had tumbled to 6.1 per cent in the fourth quarter (January-March).

That is considerably slower than the 6.9 per cent growth that the resurgent Chinese economy racked up during the same period.

Growth in GVA
 
Real GDP growth in the full year also shrank to 7.1 per cent, the slowest since Prime Minister Narendra Modi assumed office three years ago. Last year, real GDP growth was 8 per cent.

Blame it on demonetisation.

The provisional estimates also reveal that growth in gross value added (GVA) in January-March slumped to 5.6 per cent, the slowest in eight quarters, confirming fears that Modi's decision on November 8 last year to scrap 86 per cent of India's currency in circulation by value had derailed its economy.

In the same quarter a year ago, GVA growth was 8.7 per cent.

GVA is the broadest measure of the output of goods and services in the economy and does not take product taxes into account.

The CSO had recently revised the base year for wholesale price index and the index of industrial production (IIP) - two major data streams that feed into the macroeconomic growth estimations.

Analysts were expecting to see a sharp jump in the full year's GDP growth from the second advance estimate of 7.1 per cent that was made on February 28.

That did not happen: it was exactly the same in the provisional estimate put out on Wednesday.

"This was expected. Demonetisation was bad news for the economy, however the politicians may wish to package it as a reform.... Even now this data does not reflect the full story as much of the disaster that the cash-dominated informal sector suffered has not been captured," said M. Govinda Rao, a former member of the Prime Minister's Economic Advisory Council.

A number of economists, including former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, had earlier warned that demonetisation would crimp economic growth.

In a scathing speech in the upper House soon after demonetisation, Singh had termed it a "monumental mismanagement" which could see "GDP decline by about 2 per cent".

The government, however, tried to blunt criticism.

Central Statistics Office chief T.C.A. Ananth said that "linking the fourth quarter growth figures with demonetisation will not reflect analytical completeness.... This can be termed as a simplistic post-hoc analysis. Impact analysis of policy involves complex analysis in econometrics. It is not a simple before-and-after argument."

Since November last year, the government has been arguing in the face of mounting evidence that the economy would ride out a temporary hump.

Yesterday, Prime Minister Modi said in Germany in an interview to Handelsblatt, Germany's largest selling business daily, that demonetisation was a beneficial move and had "popular support".

India Inc isn't ready to buy this argument any more, especially when anecdotal evidence from the ground runs counter to the government's assertions.

Ficci president Pankaj Patel said: "The fourth quarter numbers do point towards moderation which can be attributed to the ban of high-denomination currency notes last year. However, the process of remonetisation is almost complete and the growth impulse is gradually gaining momentum."

"The numbers are subdued and we believe that this was expected after demonetisation. We do not expect the impact of demonetisation to spill over into FY18 as multiple sectors are showing signs of recovery as well as a positive thrust from the normal monsoon," said Vaibhav Agarwal, head of research at Angel Broking.

The growth figure in the fourth quarter may have been a lot worse if it wasn't for the surge in spending after the seventh pay commission payout, which is reflected in the robust 17 per cent growth in expenditure of public administration, defence and other services in January-March 2017 and by 10.3 per cent in October-December 2016.

The worst hit were the construction and financial sectors.

Construction, which relies heavily on cash payments for labour and services, shrank by 3.7 per cent in the January-March 2017 quarter, compared with 6 per cent growth in the same period in 2016.

Financial services grew by just 2.2 per cent in January-March 2017 and by 3.3 per cent in October-December 2016 as against a growth rate of 7-13 per cent in the six quarters preceding this period.

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The Telegraph, 1 June, 2017, https://www.telegraphindia.com/1170601/jsp/frontpage/story_154586.jsp


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