Trapped In The Whirlwind Of Adversity

With every passing day, the global agencies portray a grim GDP forecast for India for FY21

- Aparajita Gupta

Apart from killing over a million people worldwide, the novel coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic has infected the global economy very adversely and India is no exception. With every passing day, various global agencies are predicting lesser growth for India for the current FY21 fiscal and the just ended FY20.

The World Bank has projected that India’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP) growth may plummet to 1.5 to 2.8 per cent in FY21 due to the COVID-19 impact.

“In India, GDP growth in the fiscal year that has just started is expected to range between 1.5 and 2.8 per cent, implying the per-capita GDP growth of between 0.5 and 1.8 percent. This would come after the already disappointing growth rates of previous years. The green shoots of a rebound that were observable at the end of 2019 have been overtaken by the negative impacts of the global crisis,” stated World Bank’s report South Asia Economic Focus, Spring 2020.

The Asian Development Bank projected India’s GDP will slow down to 4 per cent in FY21 due to a weak global environment and continued efforts to contain the COVID-19 outbreak in the country. The forecast assumes that the pandemic dissipates and full economic activity resumes from the second quarter of 2020.