Has India's Economic Turnaround Started?

For about two weeks, the Union Finance Minister, Arun Jaitley, has been expressing his satisfaction over the turnaround of Indian economy. This has been the case, particularly after the Central Statistical Office’s (CSO) upward revision of the gross added value (GVA) and gross domestic product (GDP) estimates for FY 2017-18.

- Kishore Kumar Biswas

In the the third quarter, the overall performance of the economy, measured on the basis of the GDP, is impressive. Again the CSO’s advanced estimates of growth rate of GVA and GDP have been revised to 6.4% and 6.6 respectively. The noticeable thing is the higher rate of agricultural growth. The immediate former chief statistician TCA Ananth reportedly said that the growth rate of non-crops, like fishing, horticulture, animal husbandry, fruits, and vegetables are noteworthy. It is known that the share of noncrops is gaining more and more importance in the agriculture sector. But horticulture has not done well. In this situation, about 4% growth in agriculture is also doubtful. There has not been an indication or forecast from economists or any other organisation about the high rate of growth of agriculture.

There are other areas of concern. Saumya Kanti Ghosh, the SBI’s chief economic advisor, reportedly said that the overall improvement of the GDP of the whole year is not at all impressive. So it is not a happy economic situation for India. There are other problem areas like the construction sector. The quarter to quarter growth is satisfactory but the sector is yet to overcome difficulty.