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UN pegs India's GDP growth at 5.7 pc for 2019-20
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Arul Louis | 17 Jan, 2020
The UN
projects India's economy to grow by 5.7 per cent in the current fiscal year and
expects it to rise to 6.6 per cent in the next.
The projection in the UN's World Economic Situation and Prospects report
released on Thursday are higher than the 5 per cent made by the World Bank
earlier this month.
The UN growth estimate for the current fiscal is drastically lower than the
forecast of 7.6 per cent made in last year's report in January and 7 per cent
in the May update.
The head of UN's Global Economic Monitoring Branch, Dawn Holland, told IANS
that although there has been a steep decline in growth, India was still one of
the high performers globally.
She said that it was expected to improve its growth rate in the coming year
because of the steps being taken.
According to the report, only China has a higher growth rate than India among
the world's large economies with a 6 per cent forecast for the current calendar
year.
Briefing the media about the report, UN's Chief Economist Elliott Harris
presented a dire picture of the global economy last year when the world's gross
product growth rate dropped to 2.3 per cent, the lowest in a decade.
He said that rising tariffs and rapid shift in trade policies were responsible
for the lower growth rate with the United States-China trade disputes playing a
significant part.
In South Asia, Bangladesh is forecast grow by 8.1 per cent this fiscal year and
7.8 in the next, while Pakistan's growth rate estimated at 3.3 per cent for
2019-20 is projected to slip to 2.1 per cent next year.
Associate Economics Affairs Officer Julian Slotman, the UN's pointperson for
Indian and South Asia, said in an interview to IANS that "a huge decline
in investment and in private consumption" were the major reasons for the
economic slowdown in India.
External factors have also contributed to the lower growth, he said.
"Globally we have seen a large impact of trade tensions, particularly
between the US and China, but also other major economies, that have affected
growth rates across the globe and also, of course, India which is a very open
economy, that has a lot to gain from international trade," he said.
In India, he said, acethe government has responded to those issues by
announcing some stimulus steps, which we do expect to improve economic growth
in 2020 going forward. However, fiscal stimulus in itself will not be
enough."
He mentioned two areas where India could do better: Labour and green energy.
"The labour markets are not performing optimally with high levels of
informality (and) gender barriers that effectively limit the participation of
women," he said.
In addition a high number of youth are neither working nor undergoing training,
he said.
"This is something the government will have address, to both improve
long-term economic growth and to reach (the UN's) sustainable development
goals," he said.
Access to clean and affordable energy is another major area for improvement,
both to improve growth in the long-term and to reach green energy goals for
sustainable development, Slotman said.
Moreover, "India being an importer of energy has much to gain from
improving access to clean and affordable energy" even if it has to put up
with high upfront costs, he added.
Another barometer of economic growth in India and the world will be coming out
on Monday when the International Monetary Fund releases its World Economic
Outlook report.
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Customs Exchange Rates |
Currency |
Import |
Export |
US Dollar
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66.20
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64.50 |
UK Pound
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87.50
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84.65 |
Euro
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78.25
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75.65 |
Japanese
Yen |
58.85 |
56.85 |
As on 13 Aug, 2022 |
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