The International Monetary Fund (IMF) in a report has said that the growth in India is projected to remain strong, at 6.3 percent in both 2023 and 2024, with an upward revision of 0.2 percentage point for 2023, reflecting stronger-than-expected consumption during April to June.
In its October 2023 World Economic Outlook (WEO), the IMF stated that for emerging market and developing economies, growth is projected to decline relatively modestly, from 4.1 per cent in 2022 to 4.0 per cent in both 2023 and 2024, with a downward revision of 0.1 percentage point for 2024 compared with the July 2023 WEO update projection.
However, "This average path hides regional divergences, with growth in two of the five main geographic regions rising in 2023 and then falling in 2024," the IMF stated.
Notably, the revision reflects a lower forecast for China, which is revised downward by 0.2 percentage points for 2023 and by 0.3 percentage points for 2024 to the growth of 5.0 per cent in 2023 and 4.2 per cent in 2024.
"With the property market crisis in that country, lower investment is the main contributor to the revision," according to the IMF.
Talking about India, the report stated that food security concerns prompted recent export restrictions in India, the world’s largest rice exporter.
"Risks to prices are tilted to the upside, stemming mostly from the ramifications of the end of the Black Sea Grain Initiative and the uncertain effects of El Niño, possibly exacerbated by the proliferation of food export restrictions," it stated.