The India International Centre's annual Mid-Year Review of the Indian Economy is strategically timed to permit analysis of trends in the current fiscal year before budget preparations for the next year get underway. This year's Review comes at a time when both the Indian and the world economic scenario look distinctly more upbeat than a year ago.
The Indian economy is among the few large economies witnessing reasonable growth. As the Review shows, the GDP, after recording a growth of 4.3 per cent in 2002-03, grew at 5.7 per cent in the first quarter of 2003-04. The Manufacturing component of GDP grew at 6.4 per cent and the Services component at 7.4 per cent. With uniform and good rainfall, and with Agriculture and Services being the major drivers of growth, the GDP is expected to grow at 7.13 per cent in 2003-04.
Although it is clear that economic recovery is underway, the important questions are how durable the recovery is likely to be and what policy action can be taken in order to increase its longevity. The analysis presented in this Review suggests that the recovery reflects primarily domestic rather than international factors, although the international financial environment may have been crucial in facilitating economic reactivation.
18 JAN 2004
Suman K. Bery is Director General of the National Council of Applied Economic Research, New Delhi, since January 2001.
Prior to this assignment, he was at the World Bank as the Lead Economist for Brazil, and also Division Chief at the former Economic Development Institute (now the World Bank Institute) with an active programme in China; Secretary to the Bank's Research Committee. He has done work on Latin America, specifically on Argentina, Uruguay, Paraguay, Ecuador and Peru, and country work on Iran, Yugoslavia, Tanzania and Jamaica. Between 1992 and 1994 he held the position of Special Consultant to the Governor of the Reserve Bank of India. His publications include papers on Indian financial sector reforms; reforms of public sector banks; banking crises in Latin America and the political economy of economic reforms in developing countries.
Preface
List of Tables
An Overview: Suman K Bery, Sunil K. Sinha
Agriculture: Anil Sharma
Industry: Sunil K Sinha
External Sector: Rajesh Chadha, Devender Pratap, Pooja Sharma
Money and Capital Market: Kanhaiya Singh
Prices: Sanjib Pohit, Sowmya Srinivasan
Public Finance: Devendra Kumar Pant
Macroeconomic Outlook: Devendra Kumar Pant, Anushree Sinha, Rachna Sharma
Comments on the Review by the Discussants
Contributors
US$ 25