New Delhi, Dec 6 || The Reserve Bank has scaled down its forecast for India’s GDP growth for 2024-25 to 6.6 per cent from 7.2 per cent earlier, RBI Governor Shaktikanta Das announced on Friday.
He explained that the decision had been made as the growth in real GDP in the second quarter of this year at 5.4 per cent turned out to be much lower than anticipated.
However, Das said that India’s growth story was intact as “going forward, high-frequency indicators available so far suggest that the slowdown in domestic economic activity bottomed out in the second quarter of this year and it has since recovered aided by strong festive demand and pickup in rural activities.”
"The decline in growth was led by a substantial deceleration in industrial growth from 7.4 per cent in the first quarter to 2.1 per cent in the second quarter due to the subdued performance of manufacturing companies, contraction in mining activity and lower electricity demand."
The weaknesses in the manufacturing sector, however, was not broad-based but limited to specific sectors such as petroleum products, iron and steel and cement, Das pointed out.