FE Editorial : Better than it looks
The Financial Express: Feb 08 2013, 01:02 IST
The advance estimates of a 5% GDP growth for FY13 come as a rude shock for those pencilling in a 5.5% growth for the year—given the 5.4% growth in the year’s first half, simple maths tells you this means the rest of the year’s growth will have to be a lower 4.6%, quite different from what the analysts were saying when they claimed the economy had bottomed out after Q2. As a result, Citi has lowered its FY14 estimate to 5.7% from 6.2% earlier. The bottoming out theory, it has to be said, never made sense since the effects of the poor monsoon were always going to be felt in Q3; besides, bank credit to the commercial sector grew just 7% between April and January, and that too on a dismal 9% growth over the same period last year; BHEL’s order book shrank 7% sequentially in Q3 and Tata Motors January sales of MCV/HCVs fell 12% sequentially in January. But that said, it’s important to keep in mind the ‘advance’ estimates mean little—FY12 final growth was revised downwards to 6.2% from the 6.9% earlier while the FY11 numbers were revised upwards to 9.3% from 8.4% announced earlier. And given that those doing the forecasts have little hard data other than that available publicly for H1, such revisions are hardly surprising.
Look at the components of the growth, and it becomes clear why the picture is not as dark as it looks, though the improvement is small. The sharp fall in services,
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