NITI Aayog Vice Chairman Arvind Panagariya has expressed his hopes that India will regain the tag of world’s fastest growing major economy, outpacing China, as early as the first quarter (April-June) of 2017-18 on the back of host of reforms initiated by the Modi government in the last three years. He also said that the growth will rebound at a minimum of 7.5% in the current fiscal and accelerate further in the coming years.
Panagariya has said that India lost the tag to China in the fourth quarter of 2016-2017 with the GDP growth slipping to 6.1%. He also noted that China recorded a growth rate of 6.9% during the January-March quarter. He also said that India’s growth slipped to a three-year low of 7.1% in 2016-17, mainly on account of poor performance of manufacturing and services sectors. He noted that the GDP growth was at 8% in 2015-16 and 7.5% in the previous year. However, on yearly basis, he pointed that the country is ahead of China and will regain the growth momentum soon.
Vice Chairman has said that the declining trend was containing and note ban, at best, would have had only a marginal impact. He further said that the government has initiated a lot reform measures and expects that India's GDP will gradually accelerate to around 8% over the next two years. He added that FDI is now around $60 billion.