Barclays UK-based financial services company and investment bank has revised its estimate for India’s GDP growth in 2020 to 0.0 per cent from its previous projection of 2.5 per cent.
With the extension of the nationwide lockdown till May 3, Barclays research report has projected that India’s GDP will stagnate and not grow at all during the calendar year 2020.
Several global agencies, financial services companies and rating agencies off late have revised India’s growth outlook for both the calendar year 2020 and financial year 2021 on the backward polices such as demonetisation by BJP Government and implementation of GST in hurried manner and in addition to Indian economy woes and the alarming the problem due to back of the coronavirus crisis and the eventual lockdown added more fire.
Given this backdrop, Barclays has revised down their GDP growth forecast further to 0 per cent for calendar year 2020 (CY20) from 2.5 per cent earlier, and to 0.8 per cent for FY20-21 (from 3.5 per cent earlier).
This is the lowest any agency has gone as far as India’s growth story is concerned.
The report further has said: “While India’s COVID outbreak has not officially reached the community transmission stage, we believe the existing restrictions on movement are causing much more economic damage than anticipated.”
It said that despite being characterised as essential sectors, the negative impact of the shutdown measures on the mining, agriculture, manufacturing and utility sectors appears higher than it was expected.
[splco_quote]”As India heads into a longer complete shutdown (until May 3) to combat the rising number of COVID-19 cases, the economic impact looks set to be worse than we had expected earlier,” added the report. The investment bank said that combined with the disruption in several service sectors, the economic loss is estimated to be close to $234.4 billion or 8.1 per cent of its GDP, assuming that India will remain under a partial lockdown at least until the end of May.[/splco_quote]
