Amid rising concerns over the economic fallout of the deadly coronavirus outbreak, the global rating agency Moody’s on Monday slashed India’s growth forecast to 5.4 per cent for 2020 from 6.6 per cent projected earlier.

The Investors Service expects slower recovery for Asia’s third-largest economy given that its economic growth will be hit by the novel coronavirus outbreak.

Advertisement

In its update on Global Macro Outlook, Moody’s said India’s economy has decelerated rapidly over the last two years and expects economic recovery to begin in the current quarter.

“Improvements in the latest high-frequency indicators such as PMI data suggest that the economy may have stabilized. While the economy may well begin to recover in the current quarter, we expect any recovery to be slower than we had previously expected. Accordingly, we have revised our growth forecasts to 5.4 per cent for 2020 and 5.8 per cent for 2021, down from our previous projections of 6.6 per cent and 6.7 per cent, respectively,” Moody’s said.

The growth projections are based on calendar year and as per its estimates, India has clocked a GDP growth of 5per cent in 2019.

On the fiscal front, it said, the Union Budget 2020 did not contain a significant stimulus to address the demand slump. As similar policies in other countries have shown, tax cuts are unlikely to translate into higher consumer and business spending when risk aversion is high, it said.

Moody’s said it expects additional easing by the RBI. However, if the recent rise in CPI inflation, mainly as a result of higher food prices, is seen to have second-round effects, this would make it more challenging for the central bank to cut interest rates further, it added.

With regard to global growth, Moody’s also reduced its projection saying that the coronavirus outbreak has diminished optimism about prospects of an incipient stabilization of global growth this year.

As of February 16, death toll in mainland China has touched the mark of 1,770. In Hubei, the epicenter of the outbreak registered 1,933 new cases and 100 deaths on Sunday—lowest daily death count since 11 February.

Global GDP growth forecast has been revised down, Moody’s said that it “now expect G-20 economies to collectively grow 2.4 per cent in 2020, a softer rate than last year, followed by a pickup to 2.8 per cent in 2021. We have reduced our growth forecast for China to 5.2 per cent in 2020 and maintain our expectation of 5.7 per cent growth in 2021.”

(With input from agencies)