Bombay (awp / afp) – India’s GDP growth is expected to reach 9.2% for fiscal year 2021-2022, still threatened by the Covid-19 pandemic in particular, after a contraction of 7.3% during of the previous fiscal year, according to official forecasts released on Friday.
Asia’s third-largest economy recovered promptly after the violent second epidemic wave in 2021, but economists fear the new surge fueled by the Omicron variant threatens the recovery.
These are the first full-year growth estimates released by the country’s statistics authority and will be subject to subsequent revisions.
“The advance estimates say very clearly that they have not yet taken into account the impact of Covid,” Madan Sabnavis, chief economist at Care Ratings, told AFP.
Economists warn that these growth estimates, based on the first ten months of the fiscal year ending in March, could be particularly skewed due to the epidemic which flares up again at the start of the year.
“For now, we see a slight decrease in our forecast of 9% GDP growth for fiscal year 2022,” said Aditi Nayar, chief economist of ICRA, “the impact on the increase in GDP will depend on the degree of restrictions that will need to be rolled out across states in the coming weeks. “
India reported 117,100 new Covid-19 contaminations on Friday, exceeding 100,000 for the first time since June 2021. More than 3,000 cases, spread across 27 states and Union territories, are attributed to the highly contagious Omicron variant .
The administration of Prime Minister Narendra Modi has not yet declared that it is considering resorting to strict national containment, leaving hope that the economic impact of this new epidemic episode will be less severe than the previous ones.
According to the latest forecast from the International Monetary Fund, India’s GDP growth will reach 9.5% in the current fiscal year and 8.5% in the 2022-23 fiscal year.
The country’s Central Bank also estimated India’s growth at 9.5% for the current fiscal year, “assuming there is no resurgence in Covid contaminations.”
This week, India started immunizing adolescents aged 15 to 18 for the first time and administered more than 12 million doses since January 3.
Health workers have administered nearly 1.5 billion doses of the vaccine so far, and almost two-thirds of the 1.3 billion people have already received two doses, according to the latest government data.
the recall campaign for people over the age of 60 will begin next week.
afp / rp