India's GDP growth appears solid: Steve H Hanke

Noted American economist Steve H Hanke has described India's economic growth for 2016-17 as solid. Hanke, who is an American applied economist at the Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland, said this in a tweet.

He said, India's growth seems to be solid as it ignores the adverse effect of demonetization on the massive informal economy. The Indian government had last month pegged GDP growth at a higher-than-expected 7.1 per cent for the current fiscal despite note ban. The Central Statistics Office (CSO) had put the growth rate for October-December in 2016 at 7 percent. During this quarter government banned 86 per cent of the currency in circulation. The growth rate was 7.4 percent in second



quarter and 7.2 percent in first quarter. 

India's growth was higher than China's 6.8 per cent for the October-December period of 2016.The growth numbers were better than those projected by the RBI at 6.9 per cent and international agencies like IMF at 6.6 per cent, OECD at 7 per cent in view of demonetisation.

The Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development OECD had in February last year projected the country's economy to expand at 7.4 per cent in 2016-17. Encouraged by higher-than-expected GDP growth, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley has also said a 7 per cent expansion in third quarter belies exaggerated claims of note ban impact on rural economy.