There was a marginal improvement in the GDP growth rate in Q3 of FY20 at 4.7%, after it declined for five consecutive quarters. This is against 4.5% in Q2 of FY20.
According to the Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation, the GDP growth rate of 4.7% is on a base of 5.6% in the corresponding quarter of 2018-19.
In Q3 of FY19, the GDP growth rate was 6.6%.
As per the second Advance Estimates of 2019-20, India's real GDP is estimated to grow by 5% as compared to 6.1% in first Revised Estimates (RE) of 2018-19.
This marginal increase comes at a time that the Indian economy is facing a slowdown due to many factors — including high GST rates, farm distress, stagnant wages and liquidity constraints. Consumption has been subdued, and retail inflation hit a nearly six-year high at 7.59% in January.
The growth rate last quarter was expected to inch up on the back of rising inflation, along with a modest uptick in the momentum of services and industry.
The Reserve Bank had also estimated 5% GDP growth for 2019-20. China's economic growth was 6% in October-December 2019, which was the weakest expansion in over 27 years. China's economic growth was 6.1% in 2019 (calendar year), the slowest in about three decades.
Various indicators like air passenger traffic, railways' freight revenue and commercial vehicles' sales have shown improvement in Q3FY20 against weak performance in Q2FY20.
In January, the eight core industries saw a marginal increase in growth at 2.2% as against 2.1% in December 2019. Its cumulative growth during April, 2019 to January 2020 was 0.6%.
The eight core sectors include coal, crude oil, natural gas, refinery products, fertilizers, steel, cement and electricity.
Meanwhile, India's fiscal deficit touched 128.5% of the whole year budget target at January-end, said the Controller General of Accounts (CGA) on Friday.
The deficit during the same period during 2018-19 was 121.5 per cent of that year's Revised Budget Estimate (RE).
In actual terms, the fiscal deficit or gap between the expenditure and revenue stood at Rs 9,85,472 crore. The government had targeted to restrict the fiscal deficit at Rs 7,66,846 crore during the year ending March 31, 2020.
While presenting the Union Budget to Parliament earlier this month, Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman had raised fiscal deficit target to 3.8% of the GDP from 3.3% pegged earlier for 2019-20 due to revenue shortage.
With PTI inputs