India’s economic growth to be faster than China’s in 2021
India’s economic growth on a calendar year basis is estimated to have contracted by 7.6% in 2020 and is expected to bounce back strongly this year with an 11% growth.
India, the world's sixth largest economy, is set to experience a higher economic growth than that of China, the second largest economy, this year.
India's economic growth on the basis of a calendar year (running from January to December) is estimated to have contracted by 7.6% in 2020 and is expected to bounce back strongly this year with an 11% growth, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) said on Tuesday.
Meanwhile, China's economic growth is estimated to be 2.3% in 2020 and expected to grow 8.1% in 2021 but the country may see a decline to 5.6% in 2022.
The IMF also announced the growth figures for India in its latest World Economic Outlook (WEO) January 2021 on the basis of a fiscal year (FY), which starts from 1 April of each year and lasts till 31 March of the next year.
On the fiscal year basis, India's economy witnessed an estimated 8% contraction in FY2020-21 starting in April 2020 and it is projected to grow 11.5% in FY2021-22. It may slow down to 6.8% in FY2022-23.
The IMF highlighted in the outlook that, "Notable revisions to the forecast include the one for India (2.7 percentage points for 2021 [FY 2021-22]), reflecting carryover from a stronger-than-expected recovery in 2020 after lockdowns were eased."
The gross domestic product (GDP) data for the selected 30 countries has been updated in the January 2021 WEO which accounts for approximately 83% of world output.
Among the South Asian countries, only India and Pakistan's real GDP growth has been updated in the outlook, where Pakistan witnessed an estimated 0.4% contraction in FY2019-20 (July to June) and projected to grow at 1.5% in FY2020-21 and to reach 4% in FY2021-22.
Bangladesh is not included on the updated list.
However, the IMF in its October 2020 outlook announced its projection of 4.4% economic growth of Bangladesh for the fiscal year of 2020-21.
In that outlook up to FY2024-25, the global lender forecasts that Bangladesh's GDP growth will reach to 7.9% by FY2021-22 before slowing down to 7.3% in the next three fiscal years.
According to the latest outlook, the global economy is projected to grow 5.5% in 2021 and 4.2% in 2022, after an estimated 3.5% contraction in 2020.
The global growth contraction for 2020 is estimated at -3.5%, 0.9 percentage point higher than projected in the previous forecast.
The IMF said, "This reflects the stronger-than-expected recovery on average across regions in the second half of the year."
However, the 2021 growth forecast is revised up 0.3 percentage point relative to the previous forecast.