Single Volume Economic Survey Likely, May Project Growth Rate of Around 9 Per Cent

The finance ministry is expected to come out with a single volume Economic Survey for 2021-22 projecting a growth of around 9 per cent for the next financial year.

The Survey, which is tabled in Parliament by the Finance Minister ahead of the Union Budget, is being prepared by Principal Economic Advisor and other officials in absence of the Chief Economic Advisor (CEA), who traditionally is the main architect of the document. Even the first Economic Survey of the Modi government presented by the then Finance Minister Arun Jaitley in July 2014 was prepared by senior Economic Advisor Ila Patnaik.

At that time the post of CEA was vacant following the appointment of Raghuram Rajan as Governor of Reserve Bank of India. Later, Arvind Subramanian moved in as CEA in October 2014. K V Subramanian completed his three-year term as CEA on December 6 last year. The government has already initiated the process for appointing CEA who is a Secretary rank official attached to the finance ministry.

The economy, as per the advance estimates of the National Statistical Office (NSO), is expected to record a growth of 9.2 per cent during the current fiscal, which is a tad lower than 9.5 per cent projected by the Reserve Bank. On account of the outbreak of COVID-19 and subsequent nation-wide lockdown to check the spread of the virus, the economy contracted by 7.3 per cent during 2020-21.

The impact of virus on the economy was comparatively less during the current financial year as the lockdowns were local in nature and did not cause large-scale disruption in economic activity. The Survey is expected to project a growth of about 9 per cent for the next financial year, experts said citing base effect.

As per the recent report of the World Bank, India is projected to grow at 8.7 per cent while India Ratings and Research said it expects India's gross domestic product (GDP) to grow 7.6 per cent on-year in FY23. As per ICRA report, the country's real GDP is likely to maintain a 9 per cent growth rate in fiscal 2022 and 2023 amid concerns over the Omicron variant of Covid.

The Economic Survey 2020-21, released in January last year, had projected GDP growth of 11 per cent during the current financial year ending March 2022. The Survey had said growth will be supported by supply-side push from reforms and easing of regulations, push for infrastructural investments, boost to manufacturing sector through the Production-Linked Incentive (PLI) schemes, recovery of pent-up demand, increase in discretionary consumption subsequent to rollout of vaccines and pick up in credit given adequate liquidity and low interest rates.

(PTI)