New Delhi: India’s economic growth in the second quarter (July-September) of current fiscal rose to 6.3 per cent compared to 5.7 per cent in first quarter (April-June), said media reports. The report showed that the economic activities which registered growth of over 6.0 per cent in Q2 of 2017-18 over Q2 of 2016-17 are manufacturing, electricity, gas, water supply & other utility services and trade, hotels, transport & communication and services related to broadcasting.
The GDP growth is in line with Forecasts made by SBI Research, Ficci, Reuters poll and Bloomberg. The SBI Research in its report had said that the second quarter growth was likely to trend higher and might be in the lower end of 6-6.5 per cent band with an upward bias. Bloomberg and Reuters poll made similar predictions -in terms of GDP- and pegged the number at 6.4 per cent for the July-September quarter. Niti Aayog Vice-Chairman Rajiv Kumar expected the economy to grow in the second quarter at 6.2-6.3 per cent.
Moments after the GDP data was released, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley in a tweet said that the government’s reforms to push economic growth translated into robust growth in manufacturing and service sector.
While talking to reporters, Finance Minister Arun Jaitey said that poor agriculture growth had been due to the last year’s base affect. On asking about growth in the private sector, Jaitley said since the GDP growth data was aggregated, there’s no idea how the private sector has fared. He said the country is back on growth trajectory, and that the GDP boost would give fillip to job creation in the country. The finance minister also said there were some price estimates yet to be taken into account when it came to the GDP data.
