With an economic growth forecast at 6.4 per cent for this fiscal year, India will be the fastest-growing major economy, according to the UN. “We expect Indian recovery to remain strong in the near term in the next year, and two,” Hamid Rashid, the chief of the UN’s Global Economic Monitoring Branch, said on Wednesday at the release of the World Economic Situation and Prospects (WESP) mid-year report.
India’s growth contrasts with the global growth rate that is forecast at 3.1 per cent this year and the next, according to the report. Its gross domestic product (GDP), the overall indicator of the economy, is expected to go down to 6 per cent in the next fiscal year, according to the WESP. Last fiscal year, India’s economy grew by 8.8 per cent, slightly less than the January forecast of 9 per cent, the report said.
It attributed the lower growth projections for 2022-23 compared to the previous year to “higher inflationary pressures and uneven recovery of the labour market (that) will curb private consumption and investment”. Amid the global turbulence from the Ukraine conflict, the forecast for the current fiscal year has been reduced modestly by 0.3 per cent since January.
Commenting on the total global picture, Shantanu Mukherjee, the director of Economic Policy and Analysis, said: “The war in Ukraine has upended a fragile economic recovery from the (Covid) pandemic (and) global economic prospects have changed dramatically since our last forecast in January when we were expecting 4 per cent growth in 2022.”