India’s GDP grew at 0.4% in Q3 of FY21 between October-December 2020, the National Statistics Office (NSO) under the Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation (MOSPI) announced on Friday. GDP had expanded by 3.3% in the corresponding period of 2019-20, according to the NSO.
For FY21, NSO projected that the economy would contract by 8%, as opposed to a growth of 4% in the preceding year. With this, India exits the technical recession it entered after the economy declined in the July-September 2020, which was the second contraction in a row.
The ministry said that Real GDP in 2020-21 is estimated to be at Rs 134.09 lakh crore, as against the first Revised Estimate of GDP for the year 2019-20 of Rs 145.69 lakh crore.
In its second advance estimates of national accounts, the NSO has projected 8% contraction in 2020-21. In its first advance estimates released in January, it had projected a contraction of 7.7% for the current fiscal as against a growth of 4% in 2019-20.
The economy had shrunk by an unprecedented 24.4% in the Q1 of FY21 due to the lockdown, with most economic activity shut down during the quarter. In the second quarter, the GDP declined 7.3% due to a perk up in economic activities.
In a statement, NSO said that the measures taken by the Union government to contain the spread of COVID-19 has “had an impact on the economic activities as well as on the data collection mechanisms.”
“The data challenges in the case of other underlying macro-economic indicators like IIP and CPI, used in the estimation of National Accounts aggregates and specific measures, if any, taken by the government in the following months with a view to address the pandemic led economic situation will have implications on subsequent revision of these estimates,” it said, stating that these estimates are likely to undergo sharp revisions.
In terms of per capita income, NSO estimated that for 2020-21, it is expected to be Rs 85,929 as opposed to Rs 94,566 in 2019-20, a negative growth of 9.1% as against an increase 2.5% in the previous year.
“The Per Capita Income at current prices during 2020-21 is estimated to be Rs 1,27,768, showing a decline of 4.8%, as compared Rs 1,34,186 during 2019-20,” it added.
The output of eight core infrastructure sectors grew marginally by 0.1% in January, mainly due to growth in the production of fertiliser, steel and electricity. The core sectors had expanded by 2.2% in January 2020, according to the provisional data released by the Commerce and Industry Ministry on Friday. Coal, crude oil, natural gas, refinery products, and cement recorded negative growth in January.
During April-January 2020-21, the sectors' output declined by 8.8% against a growth rate of 0.8% in the same period of the previous year.
With inputs from PTI