India forecasts 6.5% GDP growth in 2023-24 fiscal year

New Delhi, Jan 31 (EFE).- India said Tuesday that its gross domestic product (GDP) is expected to grow at 6.5 percent in the next fiscal year.

The Indian finance ministry, in its annual economic survey, “projects a baseline GDP growth of 6.5 percent in real terms” in the 2023-24 fiscal year, between Apr. 1, 2023 to Mar. 30, 2024.

“The actual outcome for real GDP growth will probably lie in the range of 6.0 percent to 6.8 percent, depending on the trajectory of economic and political developments globally,” added the ministry in the document, presented a day before Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman presents the union budget.

The global economy has been rocked by the coronavirus pandemic, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine as well as a tightening of monetary policy by central banks around the world, the ministry said.

These factors have led the country’s central bank, the Reserve Bank of India, to lower the GDP growth forecast to 6.8 percent for the current fiscal year from the 7 percent predicted earlier.

But the Asian country remains optimistic as inflation, currently below 6 percent, continues to decline amid a return of global prices of crude oil to normal levels.

The Economic Counsellor and the Director of Research of the International Monetary Fund, Pierre-Olivier Gourinchas, said that the Indian economy “remains a bright spot” on the global scene.

“Together with China, it will account for half of global growth this year,” Gourinchas said in an article that accompanied the agency’s global growth forecast released on Monday.

The IMF estimates that India’s growth will decline to 6.1 percent in the next fiscal year, although it expects the Indian economy to return to 6.8 percent growth in 2024 “with resilient domestic demand despite external headwinds.” EFE

daa/pd