New Delhi, With the third quarter GDP growth rate coming in at 4.7 per cent from the revised estimate of 5.1 per cent reported for the previous quarter, industry chambers and market experts say that they are hopeful of a rebound in coming quarters.
Industry body PHD Chamber of Commerce and Industry’s President D.K. Aggarwal said the growth is expected to improve further in the coming quarters.
The plethora of reform measures and focus on consumption demand in the Union Budget 2020-21 will rejuvenate the growth trajectory and particularly boost rural demand and help manufacturing sector to post higher growth, he added.
Another industry body, Assocham’s Secretary General Deepak Sood said that GDP growth of 4.7 per cent for the third quarter of fiscal 2019-20 ending December is largely on the expected lines, but some key sectors of the economy, like coal and cement are showing greenshoots which should reflect in the subsequent quarters.
“If we see the performance of eight core industries for January, the first month of the fourth quarter and compare it with the third quarter GDP numbers, the situation seems to be improving,” Sood said as per a statement.
“Take for instance coal production, while it decelerated by 4.3 per cent in Q3, the trend reversed and coal output grew by 8 per cent in January. Similar trend is visible in cement, giving us hope that the growth slowdown is bottoming out.”
Sood said agriculture at 3.7 per cent expansion for Q3 should further show improvement in Q4 with better rabi crop prospects. As for the impact of coronavirus, fortunately, India remains largely unaffected. On the other hand, crash in crude oil prices should help in taming the inflation far more effectively, he added.
Edelweiss Securities’ Lead Economist Madhavi Arora said that further moderation in 3QFY20 growth amid historical quarterly revisions dashed markets’ hope that the economy had already bottomed out and was poised to improve.
“The 4QFY20 growth print could also face external demand headwinds and domestic supply disruptions owing to COVID-19, even as select domestic activity indicators have started showing nascent improvement. That said, we remain wary of the any secular recovery,” Arora said.
“Increasing policy traction on sector-specific policies, lagged transmission of monetary easing and some improvement in financial conditions would imply possible bottoming of growth from here on and mild improvement as we move to the next year. But despite bottoming, domestic structural overhang and global concerns will be constraining significant pick-up in growth.”
Sreejith Balasubramanian, Economist-Fund Management, IDFC AMC, said: “Inventory restocking and base effects could make some of the numbers appear better, but we believe a meaningful recovery could be further away as both demand and credit supply continue to remain weak.”
On Friday, official data showed that slowdown continued to hamper India’s economic activity as 2019-20 third quarter GDP growth rate was recorded at 4.7 per cent from the revised estimate of 5.1 per cent reported for the previous quarter.
India’s GDP growth during 2019-20 has been estimated at 5 per cent as against 6.1 per cent in 2018-19.
