India's Q3 GDP numbers: Testing growth guardrails

One minus is that aggregate private sector capex participation will lag, barring few sectoral pockets

One needs to be mindful of two aspects while interpreting Q3 FY23 growth numbers. The pick-up in activity was back-ended in 2020 and 2021 as lockdowns/curbs at the start of the year were eased through the next few months, lifting output by end-year, in effect posing considerable base effects to the December 2022 quarter. Add to that, Revised Estimates for the past two years were released concurrently, influencing the historical quarterly trend.

In this regard, the Revised Estimates for FY22 GDP growth was raised by 40 basis points (bps) to 9.1 per cent, in essence lifting the comparative base versus