NEW DELHI: The International Monetary Fund (IMF) on Tuesday said that its projection for India’s economic growth in the current financial year remains unchanged at 9.5%, while it expects the country to grow at 8.5% in next financial year.
Meanwhile, the IMF has cut its China GDP growth projections for 2021 and 2022 by 10 basis points each - to 8 and 5.6%, respectively. Outside of China and India, emerging and developing Asia has been downgraded slightly, as the pandemic has picked up, the IMF has said.
The WEO, titled ‘Recovery During a Pandemic Health Concerns, Supply Disruptions, and Price Pressures’, has forecast world economic growth at 4.9% for 2022, the same as earlier. The IMF has also said that the current account balance of India will slip into a deficit of 1% of GDP this financial year, as against a surplus of 0.9% last year. The deficit will further widen to 1.4% next financial year.
The Fund has also projected India’s consumer price index-based inflation rate to decline to 5.6% during the current financial year from 6.2% last year. For the next financial year, it has forecast a further decline to 4.9%, 1.4 percentage points lower than the earlier projection of 6.3%. Earlier, The RBI and rating agency Standard and Poor’s (S&P) - had projected India’s growth for FY22 at 9.5%.