According to former RBI Governor Raghuram Rajan, the slowdown in the economy "very worrisome", and he called for pressing reforms to boost the economy and energise the private sector to invest as well as a fresh look at the way GDP is being calculated
Former RBI Governor Raghuram Rajan has said the economic slowdown in India is "very worrisome" and has called for a fresh look at the way GDP is being calculated.
"There are a variety of growth projections from the private sector analysts, many of which are perhaps significantly below government projections and I think certainly the slowdown in the economy is something that is very worrisome," Rajan told CNBC TV18. The Monetary Policy Committee recently lowered its growth forecast for FY20 to 6.9 per cent from 7 per cent in the June policy.
Rajan also drew attention to former chief economic advisor Arvind Subramanian’s research paper published at Harvard University that claimed that India’s GDP growth figure was overstated by about 2.5 percentage points per year in the post-2011 period.
In other words, the actual growth rate is likely to have been a very tepid 3.5-5.5 per cent against a reported average growth of 6.9 per cent between 2011 and 2016. "We need a fresh look from an independent group of experts at the way we compute GDP and make sure that we are not in a sense having GDP numbers that mislead and cause the wrong kinds of policy actions," Rajan said.
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