New Delhi, Sep 1 : Even as the country’s economic growth contracted by 23.9 per cent in Q1FY21, preliminary estimates indicate the fiscal will exhibit a negative double digit growth in real GDP, says a SBI Ecowrap report.
The report, released a day after official NSO figures showed the massive fall in GDP growth, said: “After a decline of 23.9 per cent real GDP growth in Q1, now the question arises how much growth will decline in subsequent quarters.”
“It is now clearly visible that Q2 decline will also be in double digits. Our preliminary estimate indicates that all the four quarters of FY21 will exhibit negative real GDP growth and decline of full year growth will likely be in double digits (around 10.9 per cent).”
The report estimates that Q2 real GDP decline will be in the range of (-) 12 to (-) 15 per cent, Q3: (-) 5 to (-) 10 per cent and Q4: (-) 2 to (-) 5 per cent.
“It seems that momentum of economic pick-up has slowed down in Q2 FY21 and our ‘Business Disruption Index’ is nearly at the same level as on August 24 as it was at end June,” the report said.
“We now believe sectors such as construction, trade and hotels, aviation need to be revived. Restoring transportation services and giving push to infrastructure by issuing special bonds to RBI like perpetual bonds must also be explored apart from supporting states through fiscal measures in their endeavours.”
“India’s GDP growth plunged to 23.9 per cent in Q1 FY21 due to the nation-wide lockdown imposed on March 25, 2020 in the wake of Covid-19 pandemic and is much worse than market and our estimates.
“This is India’s worst growth performance since the country started reporting quarterly GDP data in 1996,” the report said.
“In the 2004-05 base, India’s lowest quarterly GDP growth was 1.66 per cent in Q3FY03. Till now GDP growth data of 60 countries has been released. Apart from China and Vietnam, all economies exhibited decline in growth.”
As per the report, the average decline of 60 economies in April-June 2020 is 12.2 per cent as compared to 1.4 per cent decline in January-March 2020.
–IANS
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