The story India's new GDP series tells us

Higher growth will come from private investment stepping up

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India is growing at a stable 7%-plus level.

ata nerds can spend all their time just looking at numbers and crafting stories that emerge out of the rows and columns. India’s new gross domestic product (GDP) numbers were released on February 27. These numbers are based on many changes under the bonnet, making them far more significant that the regular quarterly GDP data print. The headline numbers have all been chewed over, but the underlying story of the Indian economy that this data tells has perhaps been missed.

The story, in short, is this: India is growing at a stable 7%-plus a year. This growth is led by manufacturing and services on the production side. Fuelling this growth, on the expenditure side, are savings by households and government capital expenditure. India’s growth is still driven by household consumption, but that is showing signs of sluggishness. Investment by private firms is lagging and needs to step up to get all the wheels turning together. Wage levels will go up as firms begin to invest more in business. That will raise household consumption and complete the circle of growth — this is the work ahead to achieve a sustained high level of growth.