GDP growth slips to 5.8% in Q4, stands at 5-year low of 6.8% in full FY19

FY19 fiscal defict at Rs 6.45 trillion, or 3.4 per cent of GDP; April core sector growth slows to 2.6%; FY18 unemployment rate at 6.1 per cent

The rate of gross domestic product (GDP) growth in the January-March quarter of 2018-19 slipped to 5.8 per cent, mainly due to a slowdown seen in the country’s key sectors like agriculture, industry and manufacturing in the past nine months. The economic growth rate for the full 2018-19 financial year stood at a 5-year low of 6.8 per cent, showed data released by the Central Statistics Office (CSO) on Friday. The numbers were way below the forecast of 6.5 per cent for the March quarter and 7.1 per cent for FY19.

The country’s fiscal deficit in full 2018-19 stood at 3.4 per cent of GDP, roughly in line with the Interim Budget estimate. Spending during the financial year was Rs 23.1 trillion, against the revised target of Rs 24.1 trillion.

The rate of growth in eight core infrastructure industries during April 2019 came to 2.6 per cent, against 4.9 per cent in the previous month.

The unemployment rate for 2017-18 stood at 6.1 per cent, showed labour survey data of the National Sample Survey Organisation (NSSO), also released on Friday. The rate of urban unemployment stood at 7.8 per cent, while the rate for rural India was 5.3 per cent. 

Gross value added (GVA) growth for FY19 came in at 6.6 per cent.  The sectors which registered growth GDP rate of over 7 per cent in FY19 are 'public administration, defence and other services’ (8.6 per cent), construction (8.7 per cent), financial, real estate and professional services (7.4 percent), 'electricity, gas, water supply & other utility services (7 per cent)’. The growth in the ‘agriculture, forestry and fishing’, ‘mining & quarrying’, ‘manufacturing’and ‘trade, hotels, transport, communication and services related to broadcasting’ punched in at 2.9 per cent, 1.3 per cent, 6.9 per cent and 6.9 per cent respectively.

The country's economy had grown at 6.6 per cent in the quarter ended December.

The slowdown and the low GDP figures do not come as a surprise, as the finance ministry had itself said so in its monthly report for March. The report had said that India's economy slowed down slightly in the last financial year due to declining growth in private consumption, slow increase in fixed investment and muted exports.

The GDP data for the April-June and July-September quarters of 2018-19 had also be revised to 8 per cent and 7 per cent, respectively. The slowdown reached a high point with the country's industrial output touching a 21-month low in March. Factory output, as measured in terms of the Index of Industrial Production (IIP), had grown by 5.3 per cent in March 2018, according to CSO data.