oppn parties The Economy is Not Growing Sufficiently

News Snippets

  • Sikh extremists attacked a cinema hall in London that was playing Kangana Ranaut's controversial film 'Emergency'
  • A Delhi court directed the investigating agencies to senstize officers to collect nail clippings, fingernail scrappings or finger swab in order to get DNA profile as direct evidence of sexual attack is often not present and might result in an offender going scot free
  • Uniform Civil Code rules cleared by state cabinet, likely to be implemented in the next 10 days
  • Supreme Court reiterates that there is no point in arresting the accused after the chargesheet has been filed and the investigation is complete
  • Kolkata court sentences Sanjoy Roy, the sole accused in the R G Kar rape-murder case, to life term. West Bengal government and CBI to appeal in HC for the death penalty
  • Supreme Court stays criminal defamation case against Rahul Gandhi for his remarks against home minister Amit Shah in Jharkhand during the AICC plenary session
  • Government reviews import basket to align it with the policies of the Trump administration
  • NCLT orders liquidation of GoAir airlines
  • Archery - Indian archers bagged 2 silver in Nimes Archery tournament in France
  • Stocks make impressive gain on Monday - Sensex adds 454 points to 77073 and Nifty 141 points to 23344
  • D Gukesh draws with Fabiano Caruana in the Tata Steel chess tournament in the Netherlands
  • Women's U-19 T20 WC - In a stunning game, debutants Nigeria beat New Zealand by 2 runs
  • Rohit Sharma to play under Ajinkye Rahane in Mumbai's Ranji match against J&K
  • Virat Kohli to play in Delhi's last group Ranji trophy match against Saurashtra. This will be his first Ranji match in 12 years
  • The toll in the Rajouri mystery illness case rose to 17 even as the Centre sent a team to study the situation
Calling the case not 'rarest of rare', a court in Kolkata sentenced Sanjay Roy, the only accused in the R G Kar rape-murder case to life in prison until death
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The Economy is Not Growing Sufficiently

By Sunil Garodia
First publised on 2016-09-13 08:33:07

About the Author

Sunil Garodia Editor-in-Chief of indiacommentary.com. Current Affairs analyst and political commentator.
Conflicting Data
The latest set of data released by the Central Statistics Office and data from other sources indicates that while inflation is lower and tax collections are robust, industrial output is at its 8-month low and gross fixed capital formation has contracted again. These figures show that the economy is not recovering.

The data shows that:
* Consumer Price Index based inflation is at 5.05 percent, lowest since March.
* Index of Industrial Production (IIP) contracted 2.4 percent year-on-year. Manufacturing was the real culprit, going down by 3.4 percent. The alarming thing was that this reversed the trend in June when the IIP achieved an eight month high of 1.9 percent (revised).
* Tax collection at Rs 5.25 lakh crore, in first five months of this fiscal, was 23 percent higher than in the same period last year. The red flag was lower corporation tax collection, which fell by 1.9 percent.
* Gross fixed capital formation contracted again, the second time in two consecutive quarters, which is an alarming signal that shows no fresh investments.

Where is the expected growth?
The economy is not growing. There will be a chorus of demand for rate cuts by the RBI to generate investment. But the RBI may prefer to wait till December. This is due to several factors. The first is the good to very good monsoon that is expected to ease farm prices leading to still lower inflation. Anything below 4.5 percent will be a huge cushion. The second is the expected upsurge in demand for goods in the ensuing festival season, backed by the rise in salaries (as a result of 7th Pay Commission award) and payment of bonus in both government and private sectors. Pumping in more money in the economy at this juncture could be counter-productive and may lead to inflationary pressures.

Rate cut might not happen before December
The RBI might prefer to wait till December to see what surging demand and lower farm prices does to inflation and the IIP before taking a call on lowering interest rates. To many, that would be too late if India is to achieve an 8 percent growth this fiscal, but given the hawkish stance adopted by the RBI in recent times, that is the most likely scenario.