EAC member Rathin Roy dismisses IMF, World Bank India growth projections, says 'they often go wrong'

Noted economist and member of the Economic Advisory Council to the Prime Minister (EAC-PM) Rathin Roy today dismissed lowering of India’s growth projections by the IMF and the World Bank, saying they often go ‘wrong’. While the International Monetary Fund (IMF) has lowered India’s growth forecast for the current fiscal by 0.5 percentage points to 6.7 percent, the World Bank has pegged economic expansion at 7 percent, down from 7.2 percent projected earlier. The Asian Development Bank too lowered India’s current fiscal growth to 7 percent from 7.4 percent, while the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) cut economic growth forecast to 6.7 percent from earlier projection of 7.3 percent. “IMF’s growth projections are 80 percent wrong. World Bank’s growth projections are 65 percent wrong,” he said in a media interaction when asked to comment on lowering of growth projections by international multilateral lending agencies. [caption id=“attachment_4008427” align=“alignleft” width=“380”]  Reuters[/caption] Roy, who is also director of economic think tank NIPFP, however, said the council will examine causes of slowdown. India’s economic growth slipped to a three-year low of 5.7 per cent in the first quarter of the current fiscal. Replying queries at the same media interaction, Niti Aayog member and Chairman of the Council Bibek Debroy said “whether we like it or not we don’t have good data on employment”. “In a country like India, you cannot get good data on employment and jobs from enterprise surveys. The labour bureau enterprise surveys covers less than 1.5 per cent of total employment,” Debroy said. Noting that we can get data on unemployment and employment in India is through household surveys, he said the last NSSO household survey was out in 2011-12 and the next results of NSSO household surveys will not be available till 2018.