Column : A call for rebalancing

I would call this a relatively blinkered approach of interpreting the Survey. Private and public sector forecasts came with (an often significant) margin of error. Recall, last year’s Survey projected growth at 7.6%. Instead, growth will likely print closer to 5%—a whopping 30% miss! Risks of forecast errors are heightened in the current uncertain global environment, and a domestic environment peppered with state and general elections that are likely to constrain policymaking. Forecasts are also particularly vulnerable at turning points. Given all this, focusing primarily on the numbers is missing the forest for the trees.

Instead, in the current context—a high fiscal deficit, falling savings and investment, a high current account deficit (CAD), high retail inflation—it’s more useful to glean what the overarching theme of the Survey is. Is there an urgent call to action in some areas? What should be the policy priorities and how should they be optimally sequenced?

Using this lens, I would argue that the leitmotif of the Survey is “rebalancing” across various areas. This comes across explicitly in some areas such as reorienting national spending, but often implicitly in others such as the nature

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