New Delhi: In what could provide the BJP government more substance to back its claims that country’s economy is on the right track, India’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP) in the July-September quarter improved to 6.3 per cent from a year earlier. The GDP growth rate for the same quarter last year was 7.3 percent. GDP growth had slowed to a three-year low of 5.7 per cent in the April-June quarter.
In July-September, auto sales, manufacturing, electricity generation grew more quickly than in the previous quarter, data released by the government showed.
Union Finance Minster Arun Jaitley had attributed the lower GDP growth in Q1 to pre-GST destocking of goods and expressed hope that the Indian Economy will grow at 7%, saying that manufacturing has bottomed out.
Jaitley said that improvement in the global economy and good monsoon will aid India GDP growth in the coming quarters which ought to be better if the country is to achieve the annual growth target.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi had also asserted that Indian economy’s fundamentals are strong and the economy is headed in the right direction. “Despite strict initiatives, the country’s economy is on track and in the right direction.
Modi said many economists too were saying that the fundamentals of the country’s economy were strong. He added that his government had taken several steps to boost the economy. He said the Goods and Services Tax (GST) had made transportation seamless, helping save thousands of crore as now trucks need not stop at tax booths.
Earlier, economic affairs secretary SC Garg said the growth is expected to improve in the next few quarters. “Demonetisation, GST were the measures that impacted economic activities in the past 6-7 months. Those (demonetisation and GST) have reasonably played out now and from next quarter onwards, we would see the positive implication and impact of these two on GDP growth,” Garg had said.
