INSUBCONTINENT EXCLUSIVE:
New Delhi: India Ratings and Research has revised downwards its forecast for the growth of the Indian economy in 2018-19 to 7.2% from the
7.4% projected earlier.
The key reason for this, Ind-Ra said, is the upward revision in the estimation of inflation for 2018-19 due to
increasing crude oil prices and the government's decision to fix the minimum support prices of all kharif crops at 1.5 times the
production cost.
The rating agency in a report titled 'Mid-year FY19 Outlook' said it believes the other headwinds lurking on the horizon
are rising trade protectionism, depreciating rupee and, no visible signs of the abatement of the non-performing assets of the banking
Sunil Kumar Sinha, principal economist at Ind-Ra, IBC has not changed the scenario as far as non-performing assets are concerned,
Ind-Ra
said it expects private final consumption expenditure to grow 7.6 % in 2018-19 compared to 6.6 % in 2017-18.
The rating agency pointed out
that government capex alone will be insufficient to revive the capex cycle, as its share in the total capex of the economy was only 11.1%
2018-19 to come in at 4.6% and 4.1%, respectively, as against 4.3% and 3.4% projected earlier.
On rupee, the rating agency said that in
2018, rupee has already depreciated 7.7 % till July in response to elevated global turbulence, worsening of current account, rising
inflation and concerns related to fiscal deficit.
