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IMF Downgrades India's Growth Projection To 9.5% From 12.5% For 2021-22

RBI also lowered the country's gross domestic product projection to 9.5 per cent
RBI also lowered the country's gross domestic product projection to 9.5 per cent
  1. These projections could mean that India lost over 10 percent of GDP in the two COVID years. Had there been no pandemic, then the normal growth would have been about six per cent a year. The pandemic has set back India's GDP for these two years by about 10.9 per cent, if the IMF projects turns out to be the case. 
  2. However, for the next fiscal 2022-23, IMF revised the economic growth for India up from 6.9 per cent to 8.5 per cent it had projected in April 2021 - higher by 1.6 percentage points.
  3. ''...We have an upgrade for advanced economies which is being offset almost entirely by a downgrade for emerging markets or developing economies. The main sources of this divide are unequal access to vaccinations, fiscal support being withdrawn in many developing economies...'' said Gita Gopinath, Chief Economist, IMF.
  4. In its second bi-monthly monetary policy committee meeting for fiscal 2021-22 held on June 4, the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) also lowered the country's gross domestic product (GDP) projection to 9.5 per cent, from 10.5 per cent.
  5. Among the developing nations, IMF has downgraded the economic growth projections for India at three per cent, for China at 0.3 per cent, and for Saudi Arabia at 0.5 per cent. While the change in economic growth projections for the rest of the developing countries including Mexico, Brazil, South Africa, among others, is in positive terms.
  6. Along with IMF, several global and domestic agencies have cut India's growth estimates for the current fiscal. Last month, S&P Global Ratings also projected a 9.5 per cent GDP growth in 2021-22 for India and 7.8 per cent in 2022-23.
  7. The World Bank has pegged the growth at 8.3 percent from April 2021 to March 2022. Additionally, the Asian Development Bank (ADB) also downgraded India's economic growth projection to 10 per cent from 11 per cent estimated in April 2021.
  8. Recording its worst-ever performance in more than four decades, India registered a de-growth of 7.3 per cent for the fiscal year 2020-21, while the preceding January-March quarter of the fiscal showed a slight rise of 1.6 per cent. 
  9. The economy snapped out of technical recession in the third quarter of the previous fiscal, after two consecutive quarters of de-growth. In the first quarter of the previous fiscal, the GDP contracted by a record 23.9 per cent as an impact of the first pandemic-led nationwide lockdown. 
  10. India reported 29,689 new COVID-19 cases and 415 deaths in the past 24 hours - the first time in 132 days that daily cases dipped below 30,000, according to Health Ministry's data on Tuesday, July 27. The weekly positivity rate stands at 2.33 per cent and the daily rate is 1.73 per cent. So far, 44.19 crore vaccine doses have been administered in the country.