World Bank may revise India's GDP growth forecast for current fiscal

The World Bank may revise its GDP growth projection for India for the current fiscal.

The World Bank Chief Economist, Kaushik Basu, indicated, “There could be some changes” in the January review of India’s growth forecast for the current fiscal.

He was responding to media queries whether failure of the Centre to get the GST Bill passed would have an impact on the projection.

Until October, the World Bank retained its growth forecast at 7.5 per cent for 2015-16.

The India Development Update of the global development lender also expected India’s growth at 7.8 per cent in 2016-17 and at 7.9 per cent in 2017-18.

This projection was subject to investment rate picking up along journey.

Basu said the general mood had been positive which helped the investment climate.

Basu said recession in Brazil and Russia and slowdown in China made India the leading economy in terms of growth prospects for the first time this year.

“The detailed decision making (by the Government) can have an impact on the growth rate and the fact that a couple of important decisions did not go through could have an impact.” he explained.

He, however, did not clarify whether the uncertainty over countrywide goods and services tax reform would influence the investment sentiment.

The World Bank had published its biannual India update in October and mentioned that goods and services tax reform was one of the most important steps that the government needed to undertake to keep the growth momentum going.

Despite sluggish export growth, decline in current account deficit owing to lower outgo on crude oil imports has helped India in overcoming the financial tidings this year.

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