India overtakes China on economic front

Sanjeev Sharma

Tribune News Service

New Delhi, May 29

India has surged past China as the economy grew at 7.3% in 2014-15 on the back of improvement in services and manufacturing sectors growth.

The fourth quarter (January-March) of the last fiscal saw the economy grow at 7.5%, better than 6.6% recorded for the previous quarter (October-December). China had grown at 7% in the same quarter.

Finance Minister Arun Jaitley said it was now clear that the economy was in recovery mode. “Manufacturing and services sector trends indicate India can grow at 8-9% and higher,” he said.

Chief Economic Adviser Arvind Subramanian said the GDP numbers were encouraging and the data showed signs of pick-up, both manufacturing and services had improved. 

According to the data released by the Central Statistics Office today, the economic growth was 6.9% in 2013-14 as per the new series of national accounts with base year of 2011-12.

The growth in 2014-15 was lower than the advance estimates of 7.4% released in February.

Chandrajit Banerjee, Director-General, CII, said, “The economy is showing signs of recovery which could gather pace in the next fiscal. The GDP numbers for the fourth quarter show a rebound in growth as compared to the previous quarter on the back of improved performance of the mining and manufacturing sectors and trade. Similarly, the GDP figures for 2014-15 compare favourably with the previous year even while marginally undershooting the advance estimates of GDP released earlier this year”.

He said the figures showed that investment demand was showing definite signs of improvement over the previous quarter, indicating that the policy and reform initiatives taken by the government were bearing results on the ground.

“GDP growth of 7.3% in 2014-15 is encouraging and is in line with broad expectations. The government’s progressive stance on economic reforms and on improving ease of doing business has helped in creating a positive sentiment over the past one year,” said A Didar Singh, secretary- general, FICCI.