INDIA IS NOT FASTEST GROWING ECONOMY

It’s official. India is no longer the fastest growing major economy as its GDP grew merely 6.1 per cent due to the adverse impact of demonetisation of high value currency notes.

Thanks to India’s selfgoal, China got back its long-held status of fastest growing economy, without much of an effort. The Chinese economy, which is nearly five times bigger than India’s, grew by 6.9 per cent in the first three months of 2017.

This is a bad news for the government which is celebrating three years in power and Prime Minister Narendra Modi is on a foreign trip to attract foreign investments for India.

While experts blamed November 8 demonetisation for India’s losing its celebrated position, finance minister Arun Jaitley said that note ban alone could not be blamed for the slow growth as there were several factors.

According to the data, GDP growth has displayed a downtrend over the quarters of 2016-2017, from 7.9 per cent in Q1 to 7.5 per cent in Q2 to 7 per cent in Q3 and further to 6.1 per cent in Q4.

Niti Aayog vice-chairperson Arvind Panagariya expressed confidence that India would grow at 7.5 per cent in the current fiscal and by the time the tenure of the government comes to an end in 2019, it will even touch the eight per cent growth mark.

Opposition parties, however, attacked the government over poor GDP growth in the last quarter of FY17.

“Even after creating a new series and playing with data, the GDP growth rate is mere 6.1 per cent (Q4 FY17),” tweeted CPM, general secretary, Sitaram Yechury.