Reserve Bank of India’s (RBI) latest survey of professional forecasters on macroeconomic indicators, has reported that the Indian economy will gradually consolidate growth in the financial year 2017-18. It also reported that real gross domestic product (GDP) and real gross value added (GVA) are expected to increase by 7.4 percent and 7.2 percent, respectively, in the current fiscal and consolidate further by 40 basis points (bps) and 50 bps, respectively in the next fiscal.
According to the survey, CPI inflation is expected to slowly rise to 5 percent by the fourth quarter of 2017-18, with core inflation (i.e., excluding food & beverages, pan, tobacco and intoxicants and fuel and light) expected to remain sticky at around 4.8 per cent and it reported that the retail inflation stood at 2.99 percent in April. It also reported that WPI inflation is expected to rise moderately till December before declining to 3.0 per cent in the fourth quarter of 2017-18.
On the external front, the survey reported that foreign trade is expected to shed recent sluggishness as there is a greater optimism around growth of both exports and imports than in previous rounds of surveys, which is expected to sustain in 2018-19. It also expects the current account deficit (CAD) to rise in 2017-18 to 1.3 percent of GDP and further to 1.5 percent 2018-19.