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The global economy is witnessing 'K' shaped growth where the artificial intelligence boom pushes some countries and industries ahead, leaving others behind, Moody's Analytics said on Thursday. In its Global Economy Outlook, Moody's Analytics said it expects global growth to slow to 2.5 per cent in 2026 and pick up to just 2.8 per cent in 2027. It said that booming demand for artificial intelligence has saved the global economy from a sharper slowdown, but geopolitical risks, stretched asset valuations, and volatility in financial markets could easily flip the outlook from slow growth to recession. "The global economy is running at two different speeds. In some segments, growth is holding up better than expected, courtesy of the AI boom. .. But economies and industries less plugged into the AI boom have struggled," Moody's Analytics said. The agency said AI boom has driven a surge in data centre investment, exports in Asia's tech-heavy economies, and stock market valuations across t
Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman on Friday described the middle class as the growth engine of India and said nearly 500 cities are poised to emerge as the country's next centres of economic activity. Participating in a panel discussion on 'How to promote the rise of a new middle class' at the Rencontres Economiques d'Aix-en-Provence, a major economic forum of France, Sitharaman said 31 per cent of India's population is middle class as of today. Since India opened its economy, the middle class is growing at an annual rate of 6.3 per cent, she noted. "We think 93 per cent of all spending in India will be because of the middle class or the slightly affluent consumers...and again, this middle class is not concentrated in our metropolitan cities...India's model has resulted in the development in such a way that the middle class is present not just in big cities but they are on the contrary in these tier two, tier three cities," the finance minister said. The distribution of wealth is