IMF cuts India’s growth forecast to 6.8% this year

New Delhi: The world, including India, is to experience an overall slowdown in the next year owing to the impact of the Russia-Ukraine war, tightening monetary conditions globally, the highest inflation in decades, and the effect of the pandemic, according to the International Monetary Fund.

India is projected to grow 6.8% in the current financial year, following 8.7% growth in the fiscal year that ended March 31 as per figures released in the IMF’s October 2022 World Economic Outlook: Countering the Cost-of-Living Crisis at the start of the World Bank IMF Annual Meetings.

The growth rate of this year for India has been revised downward by 0.6% points relative to the IMF’s June 2022 forecast, following a weaker output in the second quarter, and subdued external demand, the IMF said. The forecast for the next fiscal year remains unaltered at 6.1%.

“India has been doing fairly well in 2022 and is expected to continue growing fairly robustly in 2023,” the IMF’s chief economist, Pierre-Olivier Gourinchas said.