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The Indian economy may not witness a 5% growth in 2013-14, says a National Council of Applied Economic Research (NCAER) report.
The research institution lowered the current fiscal year’s forecast for Gross Domestic Product (GDP) growth from its earlier prediction of 5.2% to 4.7% in its quarterly report “Quarterly Review of the Economy.”
This comes despite a sharp revision in the economic growth of 2012-13 from 5% to 4.5% by the statistical department. It, however, said that the GDP growth could touch 5.6% in 2014-15.
NCAER showed optimism on the farm sector as it expects agriculture to grow by 4.8% from its earlier forecast of 3.9% in 2013-14. “All time high food grains production is expected. A new record output of around 270 million tones is estimated,” NCAER said.
It, however, stayed firm on its estimate for the fiscal deficit for 2013-14 and said that it would remain at 5.1% of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP), a number far above the red-line mark of 4.8%.
Centre’s fiscal deficit has already touched 95% of the Budget estimate in April-December of this fiscal year.
On inflation, NCAER said that the wholesale price inflation would moderate to 6.2% in 2013-14. It had earlier predicted the WPI to be at 6.8%.
“The Wholesale Price Index has shown a decline from 7.6% during April-December 2012 to 6.2% during the same period in 2013. However the consumer price index continued to be sticky and close to double digits,” it said.
