India’s economic growth performance is ‘good’ and efforts now will be needed to sustain it, as there are concerns about the external environment, which are not quite settled, Economic Advisory Council to the Prime Minister (EAC-PM) member Sanjeev Sanyal said on Thursday.
Sanyal noted that if the weather condition and the monsoon turns out to be favorable, then food prices will hopefully get tempered as well. This will lay out conditions that will be quite conductive for a growth momentum of 7 per cent or so, to be carried through even under somewhat uncertain global situations.
“Our current economic growth performance, I would argue, (is) rather good. And the game now from here on is to be able to sustain it,” he said.
India’s economy grew by better-than-expected 8.4 per cent in the final three months of 2023āthe fastest pace in one-and-half years.
The growth rate in October-December was higher than 7.6 per cent in the previous three years, and it helped take the estimate for the previous fiscal (April 2023 to March 2024) to 7.6 per cent.
Recently, the Reserve Bank retained the GDP growth forecast of 7 per cent for 2024-25 financial year.
“… While we are very confident of our domestic growth momentum in our economy, there are certainly concerns about the external environments, which are not quite settled,” he said.
Sanyal explained that exports continue to be quite weak, and there is not yet any momentum in global exports. Moreover, “very recently, there was spike in oil prices… going up to USD 91 per barrel because of tensions in the Middle East, destruction of Russian oil facilities by Ukrainian attacks and a variety of other reasons,” the EAC-PM said.