World Bank figures for 2018 show that India has fallen in Gross Domestic Product rankings and is now the seventh-largest economy. The United Kingdom and France have overtaken India.
In 2018, India’s Gross Domestic Product was $2.72 trillion, while that of the United Kingdom was $2.82 trillion and France was $2.77 trillion. The top four economies in the world were the United States, with a GDP of 20.5 trillion in 2018, followed by China ($13.6 trillion), Japan ($4.9 trillion) and Germany ($3.9 trillion).
In 2017, India had emerged as the sixth-largest economy, overtaking France. The latest GDP data from the World Bank, however, showed that India had also overtaken the United Kingdom for a short period of time, according to the Business Standard. In 2017, India’s GDP was $2.65 trillion, followed by the UK at $2.64 trillion and France at $2.59 trillion. But soon after, in 2018, the economies of UK and France expanded, the report said.
Economists said currency fluctuations and a slowdown in growth may have led to the drop in the GDP rankings. “In 2017, the rupee appreciated against the dollar, and in 2018 it depreciated against the dollar,” Chief Economist at India Ratings Devendra Pant said. “So, it is largely due to currency fluctuation and the growth slowdown.”
These figures have come at a time when India has set itself a goal of becoming a $3-trillion economy in the current financial year and a $5-trillion economy by 2024.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi had said in February that India would continue to be the fastest-growing large economy, and could become the second-largest economy in the world by 2030. However, in June, former Chief Economic Adviser Arvind Subramanian published an academic paper in which he claimed India’s growth was overestimated by 2.5% points per year between 2011-’12 and 2016-’17, a period when both the United Progressive Alliance and National Democratic Alliance were in power. The claim has been refuted by the Economic Advisory Council to the prime minister.
In May, India lost its tag of the fastest growing major economy to China after the government announced that the Gross Domestic Product growth rate had declined to 5.8% in the last quarter of the financial year 2018-’19. This was the slowest pace of growth in 17 quarters.
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