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LATEST NEWS UPDATES | Who is really to blame for India’s growth slowdown and inflation?- Niranjan Rajadhyaksha

Who is really to blame for India’s growth slowdown and inflation?- Niranjan Rajadhyaksha

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published Published on Apr 3, 2014   modified Modified on Apr 3, 2014
-Live Mint


Data shows that Indian growth has moved in sync with what was happening in the rest of the world while Indian inflation has had a life of its own

Mumbai: The war of words between P. Chidambaram and Yashwant Sinha on the way the Indian economy has been managed over the past decade is the sort of political grandstanding that is expected in the last stage of what has been a ferocious election season.

It is always difficult to assess the extent to which economic performance during the tenure of a certain government can be explained by its own policies and how much is due to what it inherited from the previous regime as well as the state of the global economy. The recent battle between the two finance ministers hinges around these niggling complications.

Growth Inflation

One way out is to examine how the Indian economy has done under the two Manmohan Singh-led governments by comparing it with another similar country on two key parameters: growth and inflation.

Take a look at the charts that depict the difference between India and China over the past decade. The first shows how much faster China grew than India. The second one shows the difference between inflation in the two countries.

A quick look at the data demonstrates that the growth differential has stayed within a relatively narrow range while the inflation differential has widened. The same broad results are to be seen if India is compared with other emerging market countries such as Indonesia, Thailand, Malaysia, South Africa, Brazil and Mexico.
It means that Indian growth has moved in sync with what was happening in the rest of the world while Indian inflation has had a life of its own.

Growth in India and China has a strong positive correlation coefficient of 0.69 while the same measure for inflation is a negative 0.27.

So while domestic policy drift is one strong reason for the ongoing growth slowdown in India, there is no doubt that the overall global crisis has hurt domestic economic momentum. No such easy way out is available for the current government as far as inflation goes. It is a crisis of its own making.

The key policy mistakes here were made during the early years of the second Manmohan Singh-led government when Pranab Mukherjee was the finance minister.

India followed the global agreement after the financial crisis to go in for massive fiscal stimulus. But there were two big problems. One, India chose to stimulate consumer demand through higher revenue deficits rather than increase public investment to address growing supply constraints. Two, the stimulus was not withdrawn even after domestic demand revived in 2010.

The persistent stimulus to consumption spending at a time when investment spending had stalled was one important reason why inflation accelerated. The Reserve Bank of India failed to withdraw its monetary stimulus as well. Policy interest rates peaked in October 2011, 18 months after inflation peaked in April 2010.

The United Progressive Alliance rode a global economic boom that lifted all boats but is now stuck in the sand after the tide ebbed. It is its inflation record that has been truly abysmal thanks to policy errors when Mukherjee was at the helm of national finances.

The results are there to see: inflation expectations have soared, manufacturing costs have gone up and households have pulled money out of financial products that offer negative real rates of return.


Live Mint, 3 April, 2014, http://www.livemint.com/Politics/971V4bXb9Un1V85lk88goM/Who-is-really-to-blame-for-growth-slowdown-and-inflation.html


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