India Sees Slowest Growth Since 2009 on Consumption Slump
India’s economy is on track for its slowest growth since at least 2013, weighed down by the NBFC crisis.
(Bloomberg) --
India’s economy is on track for its slowest growth since 2009, weighed down by a shadow banking crisis, weak investment and a slump in spending.
Gross domestic product will grow 5% in the year through March 2020, the Statistics Ministry said in a statement in New Delhi on Tuesday. That is in line with the median estimate in a Bloomberg survey of 22 economists and compares with 6.8% expansion in the previous year.
That pace will place India, which was the world’s fastest-growing major economy last year, behind regional peers like China, Vietnam and the Philippines, all of which are seen expanding close to 6% or more.
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To boost growth, the central bank cut interest rates five times last year and Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government lowered taxes for companies.
But there’s been little sign of a revival in investment or a pick-up in consumer demand. The Reserve Bank of India last month reduced its own full-year growth estimate to 5% -- which will be the slowest pace since the year ended March 2009, as per revised data following a new methodology for calculating national output.
“All along the high frequency data had been hinting at the slowdown,” said Sunil Kumar Sinha, principal economist at India Ratings & Research, the local unit of Fitch Group in New Delhi. “But the severity of the economic slowdown has caught all by surprise.”
The International Monetary Fund is separately set to lower India’s growth forecast this month, after previously forecasting 6.1% expansion. Poor business sentiment and declining rural consumption are among reasons for weakness in the economy, the IMF’s Chief Economist Gita Gopinath said last month.
The slump in consumption, which makes up about 60% of GDP, can be attributed in part to a crisis among shadow lenders and a build-up of bad loans at banks, which in turn curbed lending in the economy. Waning consumer confidence amid unemployment at a more than four-decade high also hurt activity.
With the room for more central bank stimulus closing as inflation quickens, the focus shifts to Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman’s annual budget, scheduled for Feb. 1.
--With assistance from Tomoko Sato.
To contact the reporter on this story: Vrishti Beniwal in New Delhi at vbeniwal1@bloomberg.net
To contact the editors responsible for this story: Nasreen Seria at nseria@bloomberg.net, Karthikeyan Sundaram
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