The International Monetary Fund (IMF) in its latest World Economic Outlook, has projected India's GDP growth rate at 12.5% in 2021. This is higher compared to the forecast of (-)8% in 2020. However, the monetary fund body estimates India's economy to record a growth rate of 6.9% in 2022.
Gita Gopinath, Chief Economist and Director of the Research Department, IMF in the press briefing of the April 2021 World Economic Outlook talked about India's 12.5% growth projection.
She said, "in the case of India, we have a pretty small change. It's a 1 percentage increase for growth for 2021. This came in with high frequency... The evidence we were getting in the last couple of months in terms of the normalization of economic activity. These numbers precede the current wave of the virus, which is quite concerning. So, it indeed comes before that."
Meanwhile, Malhar Shyam Nabar, Division Chief, Research Department, IMF in the briefing said, "Just to add that the current forecast that we have already takes a fairly conservative view on the sequential growth for the Indian economy for this for this year. But it's true that with this very worrying uptick in cases that poses very severe downside risks to the growth outlook for the economy."
IMF in its outlook report stated that for the Emerging and Developing Asia regional group, projections for 2021 have been revised up by 0.6 percentage point, reflecting a stronger recovery than initially expected after lockdowns were eased in some large countries (for example, India). However, still high COVID-19 caseloads in some large countries in 2020:Q1 (such as Indonesia and Malaysia) put a lid on growth prospects.
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