INDIA’S REAL GDP TO EXPAND BY 10% IN FY22: ICRA
MUMBAI: Domestic rating agency ICRA Ratings on Monday said it expects the country’s real gross domestic product (GDP) to grow by 10.1% in FY22.
It, however, said the value of GDP in the next financial year will only mildly surpass the level that had been recorded in FY2020. “After a 7.8% pandemic-driven shrinkage in the ongoing fiscal (FY2021), India’s real GDP is projected to record a growth of 10.1% in FY2022. The seemingly-sharp expansion will be led by the continued normalisation in economic activities as the roll-out of Covid vaccines gathers traction, as well as the low base,” the agency principal economist Aditi Nayar said in a report.
The agency’s principal economist expects a multi-speed recovery in FY2022, with the contact-intensive sectors, discretionary consumption and investment by the private sector trailing the rest of the economy, in the arduous march back to attaining, and sustaining, preCovid levels.
“On a sobering note, we project the aggregate value of the Indian GDP in real terms in FY2022, to be only mildly higher than the level recorded in FY2020,” Nayar added.
The agency expects the headline CPI inflation to decline to 4.6% in FY2022 from 6.4% in FY2021, while exceeding the mid-point of the Monetary Policy Committee’s (MPC) medium target of 4%, for the third consecutive year.
A favourable base would moderate the retail food inflation to an average of 4.7% in FY2022 from 8% in FY2021, despite the pressures from edible oils, and protein items such as pulses, it said.
With the CPI inflation expected to remain above the MPC’s 4% target during FY2022, the agency expects an extended pause for the repo rate.
It expects the “stance of monetary policy to be changed to neutral from accommodative in the August 2021 policy review or later, only after there is greater certainty on the durability of the awaited economic revival.”