Festive season spending booms as consumers splurge, buoying economy

By Ruchi Bhatia and Anup Roy

India’s festive season spending is booming as consumers splurge on cars, smartphones and TVs, buoying growth in one of the world’s fastest-expanding economies.  

Sales at online platforms like Amazon.com Inc., and Walmart Inc.-owned Flipkart was up by almost a fifth in the first week of the festive sales from a year ago. Digital transactions recorded by Unified Payments Interface surged about 40% in October from a year earlier.

India’s festive season usually runs for several weeks until the Hindu religious holiday of Diwali — which takes place on Nov. 12 this year — with millions of Indians often binging on food, gifts and home improvements. The sales are a key indicator of the health of consumption, which makes up about 60% of India’s gross domestic product.

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Economists point to an easing in inflation and a pickup in wages, especially in the rural countryside, where a majority of India’s population live. Consumer confidence reached a four-year high in September, the latest central bank figures show, while demand for bank loans is hovering near a 12-year high despite interest rate hikes this year.  

Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government is also targeting farmers ahead of elections, giving them higher guaranteed prices on some crops and curbing cooking gas costs.

“Both urban and rural consumption are entering the festive season on a much stronger footing,” Yuvika Singhal and Vivek Kumar, economists at Quanteco Research, wrote in a report last week. The continuing fiscal support directed toward rural areas ahead of polls could further boost consumption in the sector, they said. 

Stronger spending is helping to drive manufacturing activity in Asia’s third-largest economy and underpinning growth of more than 6% in the current fiscal year that ends in March. The International Monetary Fund predicts India’s economy will grow 6.3% in both 2023 and 2024 — the fastest pace among major economies. 

Consumer businesses are reporting stronger sales, while banks like Axis Bank Ltd. are betting on a pickup in business momentum in the next few months. Reliance Retail said in a statement last week that it saw “strong shopping” during recent festivals.

On top of the festive period, consumption will likely also get a boost from the Cricket World Cup and the upcoming wedding season. 

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The cricket tournament is being hosted in cities across India until Nov. 19, with some economists estimating it could add $2.6 billion to the economy as fans spend on travel and eating out. The Confederation of All India Traders, the country’s largest traders group, expects the wedding season, which runs from Nov. 23 to Dec. 15, will result in $50 billion of spending on items like gold jewelry, clothing and other consumer goods. 

“The festive season is expected to be followed by a robust wedding period, both of which combined should support near-term growth,” Teresa John, an economist at Nirmal Bang Institutional Equities Pvt, said last week. “Easy availability of credit and expectations of cooling inflation should also aid a gradual recovery in discretionary spending particularly in the mass market.”

Online sales from Amazon, Flipkart and others reached 47 billion rupees ($565 million) in the week through Oct. 15, consulting firm RedSeer said in a report. Mobile phones, electronic goods and large appliances drove around 67% of the sales, it said.  

UPI, which records real-time digital payments, processed transactions worth 16.46 trillion rupees from Oct. 1-30, an increase of more than 40% from a year earlier. Credit card payments jumped 16% to 1.42 trillion rupees in September, data from the Reserve Bank of India shows.

Other high frequency indicators paint a similar picture of strong consumption:

Goods and services tax collection rose 10% from a year earlier to 1.6 trillion rupees in September

Peak electricity demand, a key barometer for activity in industrial and manufacturing sectors, surged to an all-time high of 240 gigawatts in September, topping the government’s forecasts

Factory floors are also buzzing, with manufacturers adding more capacity to keep up with the strong demand.

“We have healthy orders across most of the verticals led by mobile phones, LED televisions and washing machines,” Saurabh Gupta, chief financial officer at Dixon Technologies Ltd., one of the country’s largest contract manufacturers, said earlier this month. Dixon had introduced multiple shifts across the majority of its 20 factories to meet its order pipeline.