India’s GDP contracted 8.6% in the quarter ended in September, according to an RBI bulletin.
New Delhi:
Congress leader Rahul Gandhi today attacked Prime Minister Narendra Modi for signaling that for the first time in history India’s economy entered a technical recession in the first half of 2020-2021.
In a tweet today, Mr Gandhi posted screenshots of a newspaper article on the economic recession to make his point.
India entered recession for the first time in its history.
Mr. Modi’s actions turned India’s strength into its weakness. pic.twitter.com/Y10gzUCzMO
– Rahul Gandhi (@RahulGandhi) November 12, 2020
India’s economy likely contracted for a second straight quarter, plunging the country into an unprecedented recession, according to a team of economists including Michel Patra, the Reserve Bank of India’s deputy governor in charge of Monetary Policy.
“India entered a technical recession in the first half of 2020-2021 for the first time in its history,” the report’s authors wrote. The government is expected to release statistics on November 27.
The country’s GDP contracted 8.6 percent in the quarter ended September, the RBI showed in its first-ever published “nowcast,” an estimate based on high-frequency data. The economy had collapsed by about 24 percent from April to June.
The government is expected to release official statistics on November 27.
“There is a serious risk of widespread pressure on prices, of unanchoring inflation expectations fueling a loss of credibility of policy interventions,” the economists wrote in the Reserve Bank bulletin. They also highlighted the risks to global growth of a second wave of coronavirus infections.
The lockdowns induced by the pandemic had caused a sharp contraction of 23.9% of GDP for the April-June quarter compared to the same period a year ago. The RBI estimated that the economy would contract 9.5% for the full year, according to PTI.
The article, however, said the contraction in the economy “is ebbing with the gradual normalization of activities and is expected to be short-lived.”
