Economy: Walking, but not yet running

The FM must resist both half-baked schemes for pre-electoral largesse as well as ill-planned reform dhamakas

Has the economy turned around and is the growth process back on track? The government’s statisticians are now projecting a 6.5 per cent growth rate for gross domestic product (GDP) in this fiscal year, lower than the 6.7-7.5 per cent range of the forecasts from the Reserve Bank of India (RBI), the NITI Aayog and the finance ministry. The Central Statistics Office’s (CSO’s) 6.5 per cent forecast is a first Advanced Estimate which will be revised several times in the months ahead, the next revision coming perhaps as early as end-February. The finance ministry and the RBI may yet be