Current Affairs India: ExplainSpeaking | India's GDP growth: Its contents and discontents

Sunday, 8 January 2023

ExplainSpeaking | India's GDP growth: Its contents and discontents

In just three weeks’ time, Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman will rise to present the Union Budget for 2023-24, likely to be the last full-fledged Budget of the incumbent government. The Finance Minister relies on the First Advance Estimates (FAE) to decide the next financial year’s budget allocations.

The latest FAE suggest that in the current financial year, real GVA (gross value added) and real GDP (gross domestic product) — the two main ways to measure India’s national income — will grow by 6.7% and 7%, respectively. By themselves, these numbers may seem impressive; even more so when compared internationally. But international comparisons are of limited value.