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Gross Discrepancies Projected: But For Special Item, March GDP Growth Would Have Been 3.9%

Gross Discrepancies Projected: But For Special Item, March GDP Growth Would Have Been 3.9%
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There’s plenty to cheer about India’s recent GDP growth data and economy, which clocked a 7.6 percent increase in the fiscal 2015-2016. However, a closer look reveals possible catches in the growth data that are worth exploring, Mint reports.

1)Mind the gap: There’s a wide gap between GDP growth and industrial production growth numbers, which is unusually stark compared to similar gaps in GDP data of other countries, according to Mint. It also raises the question on how the GDP numbers are computed, and the quality of the data used, pointing to doubts surrounding production data.

2)Thank you, “discrepancies”: In another observation, a large part of the growth, nearly 51 per cent, was credited to an item called ‘discrepancies’, amounting to Rs 1.43 trillion (at constant prices) in the March quarter. Discrepancies also grew by ₹1.13 trillion year-on-year. The GDP growth rate would have been only 3.9 per cent had these discrepancies not been taken into consideration. It wasn't immediately clear what constituted these discrepancies.

3)Agri growth still our saviour: Non-agricultural growth slowed in the March quarter to 8.4 per cent from 8.9 per cent in the previous quarter. This figure isn’t particularly good news for the government's push into the manufacturing sector, or the ‘Make in India’ campaign.

On Tuesday, it was announced that India’s March quarter Gross Domestic Product (GDP) grew by 7.9 percent, according to official data, beating most analyst forecasts which had predicted a 7.5 percent growth for the quarter.

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