Economic growth likely to improve to 7-7.5 pc in FY19: Survey

Team Udayavani, Jan 29, 2018, 2:23 PM IST

New Delhi: India is expected to regain the world’s fastest growing major economy tag as it is likely to clock 7-7.5 per cent growth rate in 2018-19, up from 6.75 per cent in the current fiscal, the Economic Survey said today.

The economy, said the survey for 2017-18, will grow on the back of major reforms which would be strengthened further in the next financial year. The survey was tabled in Parliament by Finance Minister Arun Jaitley.

“A series of major reforms undertaken over the past year will allow real GDP growth to reach 6.75 per cent this fiscal and will rise to 7 to 7.5 per cent in 2018-19, thereby re- instating India as the world’s fastest growing major economy,” it said.

The reform measures undertaken in 2017-18 can be strengthened further in 2018-19, it said. The survey points out that India can be rated as among the best performing economies in the world as the average growth during last three years is around 4 percentage points higher than global growth and nearly 3 percentage points higher than that of emerging market and developing economies.

It said that the GDP growth has averaged 7.3 per cent from 2014-15 to 2017-18, which is the highest among the major economies of the world. “That this growth has been achieved in a milieu of lower inflation, improved current account balance and notable reduction in the fiscal deficit to GDP ratio makes it all the more creditable,” it said.