Expressing optimism over India’s growth prospects, Chief Economic Adviser V Anantha Nageswaran has said there was a high possibility of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) growth touching 8 percent in FY24 on the back of robust growth registered during the three quarters of the financial year ended March 2024. The country’s GDP grew by 8.4 percent in the third quarter ended December 2023. In the second quarter, the GDP growth was 7.6 percent while 7.8 percent in the first quarter. He said ‘The IMF has projected a growth rate of 7.8 percent for FY24. But if you look at the trajectory of growth in the first three quarters, obviously, the possibility that the growth rate touches 8 percent is quite high’. This is higher than RBI's India growth estimate of 7.5 percent for 2023-24.
For the ongoing financial year, he said the International Monetary Fund has an estimate of 6.8 percent but the Reserve Bank of India expects a 7 percent GDP growth for FY25. He said ‘If that materializes, of course, it will be the fourth consecutive year after COVID starting from FY22 that the economy will have grown at 7 percent or more. The RBI forecast of 7 percent for FY25 turns out to be either correct or even underestimated, then it would be the fourth consecutive year of 7 or higher growth rate’. However, he said, a lot would depend on how the monsoon shapes up. Although the expectations are that there will be an above-normal monsoon, spatial and temporal distribution will matter.
On the growth beyond FY25, he said there is a possibility of India growing between 6.5-7 percent because the key difference this decade compared to the last is the one of balance sheet strength in the financial sector and the non-financial sector in the corporate sector as well. The investment made in supply-side augmentation of both physical and digital infrastructure has placed the economy to pursue non-inflationary growth, he said, adding that this also helps absorb the challenge of overheating. He also expressed hope that there would be no nasty upside to inflation at the moment and it may moderate further to the median range of 4 percent in the coming months.