The Asian Development Bank (ADB) on Wednesday trimmed its forecast for India’s economic growth in 2019-20 to 5.1 per cent from the previous forecast of 6.5 per cent saying consumption was affected by slow job growth and rural distress aggravated by poor harvest.
Further, it has also cut the estimate for the next fiscal, FY 2020-21 to 6.5 per cent from 7.2 per cent.
“In India growth has slowed substantially as a result of a credit crunch and weakening domestic demand,” said a statement by ADB. This is another addition to the series of downward revision of India’s economic forecast for the ongoing fiscal.
The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) in its monetary policy announcement last week revised its FY2019-20 outlook to 5 per cent from 6.1 per cent.
The central bank said that the July-September GDP growth had turned out to be significantly lower than projected and various high frequency indicators suggest that domestic and external demand conditions have remained weak.
The growth rate for the second quarter slumped to a 6-year low of 4.5 per cent.
(With input from agencies)