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India’s 3Q pain in store for GDP growth

India’s current financial year is set to record the worst economic expansion in its third quarter, as economists do not see the GDP growing beyond 6.7 percent against the backdrop of a near-flat growth in the industrial production numbers.

The first quarter of 2011-12 saw the economy growing by 7.7 percent, while the figure was 6.9 percent in the second quarter, thus delivering a 7.3 percent economic expansion in the first half. Advance estimates pegged the economic growth at 6.9 percent for the entire FY12.

While the numbers pegged by various economists differ quite a lot, most of them forecast it to be somewhere in the 6.4 to 6.7 percent range. But, a few of them project the GDP growth to fall as low as 6.2 to 6.5 percent in the third quarter. Now, even at 6.7 percent, the economic growth would be a ten-quarter low. The third-quarter GDP figures will be out this Wednesday. Assuming the GDP to grow by 6.7 percent in the third quarter, economic expansion has to be 7.4 percent in the fourth quarter so as to deliver a 6.9 percent growth for the entire 2011-12, as calculated in advance estimates.