India’s gross domestic product slowed down to 4.4% in the third quarter (October-December) of the financial year 2022-’23, government data showed on Tuesday. The growth rate has slowed down from 5.4% in the same quarter last year.
In the first quarter (April-June) of this financial year, the country’s economy grew by 13.5% before moderating to 6.3% in the second quarter from July-September.
The GDP growth for the October-December period came in line with the figure predicted by the Reserve Bank of India.
On Tuesday, the government kept GDP growth estimate for the full financial year 2022-’23 unchanged at 7%. It also revised the GDP growth for 2021-’22 to 9.1% against the earlier estimate of 8.7%.
The growth of Indian economy slowed down in the October-December quarter mainly due to poor performance of the manufacturing sector, which contracted by 1.1%, compared to a growth of 1.3% in the year-ago period.
The agriculture sector grew at 3.7% in the third quarter compared to 2.2% in the same three-month period last year. The construction sector grew 8.4% as against 0.2% last year, while the mining sector grew 3.7% compared to 5.4% in the same period last fiscal.
On November 30, Chief Economic Adviser V Anantha Nageswaran had said that the slowing of economic growth had been expected due to the fading away of the base effect, which meant that the growth figures from the first quarter were unusually high on account of being compared to weaker economic activity during the pandemic.
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