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Economy Plunging Headlong Into Recession -Prabhat Patnaik

-TheCitizen.in

NEW DELHI: Volume II of the Economic Survey which was brought out by the Ministry of Finance a few days ago paints an extremely grim picture of the Indian economy.

The growth rate of real Gross Value Added (GVA which is the appropriate thing to look at, since the GDP measure includes net indirect taxes and hence does not truly reflect output trends), was 6.6 percent for 2016-17 as a whole, compared to 7.9 percent for 2015-16.

More importantly, the quarterly growth rate (i.e. the growth rate of GVA in a particular quarter over the corresponding quarter of the preceding year) kept declining in every successive quarter during 2016-17, the fourth quarter growth rate being just 5.6 percent, which was roughly 3 percent below that of the fourth quarter of 2015-16.

Besides, even this growth rate was artificially boosted by two factors: one was the unusually good agricultural performance because of favourable weather (real GVA growth rate in agriculture was 4.9 percent in 2016-17 compared to a mere 0.7 percent in 2015-16), and the other was the growth in Public Administration and Defence because of the 7th Pay Commission award. (This sector’s real GVA growth rate for 2016-17 was 11.3 percent compared to 6.9 percent for 2015-16).

If we take out these two sectors then we get what the Survey calls “Core GVA”. The growth rate of “Core GVA” was just 6.2 percent in 2016-17 compared to 9.8 percent in 2015-16, a drop of 3.6 percent. And given the fact that the growth rate during the year was not just lower but declining through time, the fourth quarter growth rate in Core GVA was as much as 6.8 percent lower in 2016-17 compared to 2015-16. This is deceleration with a vengeance.

What is more, this deceleration is certain to continue into the next year. There are at least three strong reasons for this.

One is that the effect of the increase in Public Administration and Defence will no longer be there, which in turn will affect the economy in two ways. The obvious way is the slowing down in this sector’s own growth rate. But the less obvious one is the following.

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