Global credit rating agency Moody’s Investors Service on Tuesday said economic growth projections mentioned by Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman in the Budget for 2020-’21 appeared ambitious considering the structural and cyclical challenges the Indian economy is facing, PTI reported.
According to Sitharaman’s estimate given on Saturday, the nominal Gross Domestic Product growth in 2020-’21 will be 10%, according to the government. Before the economy slowed down in 2019, the average nominal GDP growth from 2014 to 2018 was about 11%.
Nominal gross domestic product is GDP evaluated at current market prices. It differs from real GDP as it includes price changes due to inflation.
“These forecasts appear ambitious given the combination of structural and cyclical challenges that the Indian economy faces,” said the ratings agency. “We expect the economy to rebound at a more modest pace, with nominal GDP growth rising to around 8.7% in fiscal 2020 and 10.5% in fiscal 2021, from about 7.5% in fiscal 2019.”
The statement came a day after Minister of State for Finance Anurag Thakur told Parliament that the Indian economy was not in recession, and pointed out that it had the fastest average rate of growth between 2014 and 2019 among the G-20 countries. Thakur said that according to the International Monetary Fund’s estimates, India’s Gross Domestic Product growth rate was likely to be 5.8% in 2020-’21, and 6.5% in 2021-’22 – higher than that of China’s.
The real growth of the Indian economy was just 4.5% in the second quarter of 2019-’20, the slowest in six years. The government has forecast an annual real growth rate of just 5% for the financial year, the slowest in 11 years.
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