India's GDP for Q1 at 6.1 perc - meets expectations

(posted under - Indian GDP news) - India's economy grew 6.1 per cent in the June quarter from a year earlier, roughly in line with forecasts, as government stimulus measures helped spur demand, although a poor monsoon threatens to crimp growth later in the year even as it drives inflation.

The economy accelerated from its 5.8 per cent rate in the previous quarter, data showed on Monday, propelled by a pick-up in activity in the mining, manufacturing, electricity and services sectors from the previous quarter.

Indian economy account deficit becomes thinner at 1.3 percent

Here is good news for all the indian,s - India's current account deficit this fiscal is likely to narrow down to 1.3 per cent of GDP as the trade gap shrinks and FDI inflows pick up on the back of positive election mandate.

In 2008-09, the current account deficit was 2.6 per cent of the country's gross domestic product (GDP) at $29.8 billion, against $17 billion a year ago.

Goldman Sachs said the deficit is lower than their expectation of 3.5 per cent, mainly due to rapid fall in imports in the January-March quarter of 2008-09.

The firm also said that domestic demand and its expectations of the output gap closing rapidly, are likely to support a strengthening rupee.

Real GDP growth in Q1 FY 09 at 7.9 pc-CMIE

The first quarter of this fiscal witnessed a real GDP growth of 7.9 per cent which is expected to accelerate further in the second half, an economic think-tank report said.

"Real GDP grew by 7.9 per cent in the first quarter of 2008-09. We expect the economy to accelerate in the second half of the fiscal," the Centre for Monitoring Indian Economy (CMIE) said in its September monthly review.

The broad composition of the growth in the first quarter was - agriculture - three per cent, industry - 6.9 per cent and services - 10 per cent, CMIE said.

However, each of these were lower than the corresponding levels of growth in the year-ago quarter with the slowdown severest in industry, CMIE said.

"Within industry, mining and construction sectors reported healthy acceleration in growth," the report said.
Mining growth accelerated from 1.7 per cent in the previous year to 4.8 per cent in this year while in the case of the construction industry, the acceleration was from 7.7 to 11.4 per cent.

The manufacturing and utilities sectors saw a serious slowdown. "Growth in manufacturing slowed to 5.6 per cent in the first quarter of 2008-09 from the 10.9 per cent growth registered in the first quarter of 2007-08," CMIE said.

-Economic Times