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Economic Advisory Council to the Prime Minister (EAC-PM) Chairman Bibek Debroy has said that India is on a path towards a higher growth trajectory, higher poverty reduction, higher employment, and a prosperous, more developed and better governed India and the country’s Gross domestic product (GDP) is likely to grow at around 10 percent in 2021-22.

Debroy has noted that at the beginning of FY2021-22, the forecasts for real growth were in the 8.5-12.5 per cent range. However, he said all kinds of high-frequency indicators, including GST revenue, e-way bill, power consumption, vehicle registrations, railway freight, corporate profitability, foreign direct investment (FDI) inflows and steel consumption now instil confidence about the fact that the real rate of growth will be at around 10 per cent this financial year. For the 2022-23 fiscal, he expects growth likely to be in the 6-7.5 percent range. According to him, growth and income growth has four drivers - consumption, investment, government expenditure and exports. Of those, three and a little bit of investment are showing fairly robust and broad-based growth.

He further said the export story in the country looks good at present. Also, government expenditure has been quite stepped-up. He said with improvement in capacity utilisation, investments are also going to pick up in another six months. He stated that there is a lot of uncertainty around the third wave of COVID-19. However, he said even if it comes, the impact on economic growth is not going to be very serious due to higher vaccination numbers and a better-equipped medical system.