NEW DELHI: On the heels of the Reserve Bank of India last week revising India’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP) from 7.2% to 7%, UNCTAD gave yet another jolt to India’s floundering cut in this year GDP growth estimates from 8.2% to 5.7% and still rose at 4.7% in the next financial year of 2023-24.
Congress spokesperson Dr Anshul Avijit told reporters that the Indian economy, one of the primary concerns of the Bharat Jodo Yatra that completed three days in Karnataka, is revealing one bad news after another.
He said the BJP government and its spin doctors keep quoting the high frequency data to camouflage the real health of the economy, but nobody is fooled as the inflation remains high, unemployment increasing and growth estimates are being revised downwards with each passing day.
Dr Avijit said there should be no surprise if there is another cut in the GDP estimates after the next Monetary Police Committee meeting two months from now as the trend will continue.”The mismatch between a high GDP estimate and the state of the real economy, i.e. lack of jobs and output — would be hard to explain.
He said another point to note is that over the past three years, India’s GDP has grown just over 3% and at such low levels of the growth, India cannot create more jobs or take steps to alleviate poverty.
Not only UNCTAD estimates, he said similar GDP estimate cuts have been also done by other financial institutions and rating agencies for the 2022-23. The pessimism regarding future growth is evident. He said the lack of contribution by the informal sector is a primary reason for the decline in GDP.
