India needs to change fiscal, monetary policy to achieve 6.4% GDP growth in 2025: Moody's Analytics

30 Jan 2025 Evaluate

Amid a weak rupee, declining foreign investment and volatile inflation, Moody's Analytics has said India needs to change its fiscal and monetary policy to achieve a 6.4 per cent GDP growth in 2025. It expects the 2025-26 Union Budget to support domestic demand, particularly investment while aiming for a fiscal deficit of less than 4.5 per cent of GDP for the next fiscal. In 2023-24, the fiscal deficit was 5.6 per cent of GDP, which is estimated to come down to 4.9 per cent in the current fiscal.

It said ‘India is facing a bumpy road in 2025. A weakening rupee, declining foreign investment, and volatile inflation are the areas of greatest economic risk. Changes in fiscal and monetary policy, likely in the first half of the year, is needed if India is to achieve 6.4 per cent growth’. Moody's said that while India had one of the fastest-growing economies in Asia in 2024, GDP growth waned over the first three quarters. GDP growth likely picked up in the December quarter, resulting in an overall expansion of 6.8 per cent in 2024. That compares with 7.8 per cent in 2023.

Moody's Analytics said the rupee has weakened significantly since the start of the US Federal Reserve's easing cycle in September. Donald Trump's win in the US presidential race only put more pressure on the rupee as investors sold Indian assets, jumping on a greenback rally. Despite interventions by the Reserve Bank of India, the rupee lost more ground in the opening weeks of 2025, hitting a record low of Rs 86.6 to the US dollar in mid-January.

It also expects inflation to cool to 4.7 per cent in 2025 from 4.8 per cent in 2024. Food inflation should ease, but the tumbling rupee will likely add to input costs, driving up imported inflation. Currency weakness may also delay rate cuts. It added ‘India faces a challenging 2025; growth is slowing, the rupee looks set to tumble against the greenback, and headline inflation is far from the midpoint of the central bank's target range’.


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