New Delhi: If the government's advanced Gross Domestic Product (GDP) comes true, Indian economy is evenly poised to be grown at the fastest pace in the world at 7.4% in 2015 matching that of China. These figures have left economists in doubt and they see little evidence of such a sharp growth surge.
China's economy expanded at 7.4 per cent in the calendar year 2014.
According to data released by the statistics office on Monday, India might become the world's fastest-growing major economy, possibly overtaking a slowing China this year itself.
"The numbers are quite puzzling," said Soumya Kanti Ghosh, chief economic advisor, State Bank of India, “They do not seem to be matching up with the indicators on the ground.”
Ashish Kumar, Additional Director-General of Central Statistics Office (CSO) said that though the estimates put India's growth ahead of China, the fact was India's economy was many times smaller in size than China's and, therefore, the two could not be compared.
The economy is poised to grow 7.4% in the current year crossing the USD 2.1-trillion mark, bettering 6.9% recorded last year, the statistics office said. According to International Monetary Fund estimates, China is pegged to grow at 6.8% in 2015.
These stats will force Finance Minister Arun Jaitely to slash the deficit by another Rs 12,000 crore from the Rs 5.31 lakh crore previously budgeted, to keep it at 4.1% of GDP.
The statistics office has recast the way in which it measures data in line with international norms, which takes market prices into account rather than the factor cost that was being considered previously. The base year was also changed to 2011-12 from 2004-05. The earlier series had shown GDP growth at 4.7% in FY14 and the consensus forecast for the current year was 5.5%.
