India quarterly GDP up 13.5 percent

A POST-pandemic rebound saw India's economy grow 13.5 percent in the June quarter, official figures showed Wednesday, but the expansion was below forecasts thanks to the headwinds buffeting Asia's third-largest economy.

The increase from the same quarter last year reflects a dramatic uptick in activity since mid-2021, when the peak of the country's most devastating coronavirus wave began to recede.

That outbreak saw thousands of people dying across India each day, overwhelming hospitals and crematoriums, and came after an extended lockdown that pummelled consumer spending and brought factories to a standstill.

Wednesday's figure was the highest since the 20.1 percent expansion recorded during the same period last year, at a time when business activity was recovering from government shutdown edicts.

But the result is well below the 16.2 percent forecast by the Reserve Bank of India (RBI), the country's central bank, with inflation and other indications of economic weakness dragging down performance.

‘The numbers are lower than we expected,' State Bank of India chief economic advisor Soumya Kanti Ghosh told AFP.

He added that the RBI would most likely revise down its 7.2 percent growth forecast for the year to March 2023, with weakness in the manufacturing sector a cause for concern.