NEW DELHI: The government on Wednesday lowered the country’s economic growth rate during the previous Congress-led UPA regime, shaving off over 1 percentage point from the only year when India posted double-digit GDP growth post liberalisation and from each of the three years with 9-plus per cent expansion.
Recalibrating data of past years using 2011-12 as the base year instead of 2004-05, the Central Statistics Office (CSO) estimated that India’s GDP grew by 8.5 per cent in the financial year 2010-11 (April 2010 to March 2011) and not at 10.3 per cent as previously estimated.
Similarly, 9.3 per cent growth rate each in 2005-06 and 2006-07 was lowered to 7.9 per cent and 8.1 per cent respectively, while 7.7 per cent rate was now estimated for 2007-08 instead of 9.8 per cent.
The revised growth numbers have been released ahead of the 2019 general elections.
At a joint press conference along with Chief Statistician Pravin Srivastava, Niti Aayog vice-chairman Rajiv Kumar said variation in two sets of numbers was due to the recalibration of data in certain sectors of the economy, including mining, quarrying and telecom.
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