India's gross domestic product grew up to 7.9 per cent in the fourth quarter of 2015-16, increasing overall growth for the entire year to 7.6 per cent and help maintain its position as the fastest-growing major economy, as per the Central Statistics Office.
The growth numbers for the last fiscal came on the back of a strong 7.9 per cent growth in the last quarter of the fiscal. According to data released by the CSO, the farm sector grew by 2.3 per cent from a year ago compared with a 1.0 per cent contraction in the December quarter. Mining grew 8.6 per cent in the March quarter, up from 7.1 per cent in the previous quarter. Electricity, water and gas production growth surged to 9.3 per cent from 5.6 per cent in the December quarter.
It said in a statement that it revised the GDP data for the first three quarters released earlier from 7.6 per cent, 7.7 per cent and 7.3 per cent to 7.5 per cent, 7.6 per cent and 7.2 per cent, respectively. Also, the growth in the "agriculture, forestry and fishing" sector was revised upwards to 1.2 per cent in 2015-16 as against 1.1 per cent in the advance estimates for the same period. "The upward revision is on account of the use of third advance estimates of crop production released by the Ministry of Agriculture," it said. "The IIP of manufacturing registered a growth rate of 2 per cent during the whole year of 2015-16, as against the growth rate of 3.9 per cent used for compiling Advance Estimates. Due to this change, the advance estimate growth of ‘manufacturing’ sector has been revised downwards to 9.3 per cent," it added.
"The numbers are higher than what the consensus expectation was, so in that sense, it is definitely positive, which means going forward also the outlook continues to be positive. We are already seeing some recovery in the core sector data, and hopefully in IIP (industrial output) data also we will see signs of recovery. With expectations of monsoon being normal, the consumption will get a boost from rural income growth. What is still unknown is on investment pick-up, but we expect export growth to start picking up, which can help investment pick-up. So we do expect a gradual improvement in the economy going forward," said A Prasanna, Economist, ICICI Securities Primary Dealership.
