GDP growth slows to 5-yr low... now below China

New Delhi: In bad news for the new government on day one, CSO data showed that economic growth slowed to a 5-year low of 5.8 per cent in the fourth quarter of 2018-19, pushing India behind China, due to a poor showing by agriculture and manufacturing sectors.

The Central Statistics Office (CSO) released a worrisome set of data on the rate of unemployment for 2017-18, confirming the pre-election leaked report's claim of joblessness at a 45-year high of 6.1 per cent.

Chief Statistician Pravin Srivastava, however, emphasised that the latest labour survey cannot be compared with previous ones and said that he doesn't want to "claim that is 45-year low or high" as it is a different matrix.

The growth of the eight core sector industries during April too witnessed a slowdown. The expansion was at a rate of 2.6 per cent. These industries contribute about 41 per cent of the overall factory output of the country.

There was, however, some relief on the front of government finances as the fiscal deficit for 2018-19 remained within the revised Budget target of 3.4 per cent of the GDP.

Commenting on the GDP data, Economic Affairs Secretary S C Garg said the slowdown in the fourth quarter of the last fiscal was due to temporary factors like stress in the NBFC segment. He also underscored that the economic activity may also remain sluggish during the April-June quarter of the current fiscal before picking up in the subsequent months.

The CSO data on national income revealed that the annual Gross Domestic Product (GDP) for fiscal 2018-19 (at 2011-12 prices) too was at a five-year low of 6.8 per cent. The GDP growth was 7.2 per cent in 2017-18.

Garg said that on the basis of the annual growth rate of even 6.8 per cent, India continues to remain the world's fastest-growing major economy.