Economic Survey to be tabled today, likely to project India’s GDP growth at 6.3-6.8% in 2025-26

The Economic Survey 2024-25 is expected to project economic growth of 6.3-6.8 per cent for the financial year 2025-26.

Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman will table the Economic Survey in the parliament on Friday, a day before she will present the Union Budget 2025-26.

The Economic Survey, prepared by Chief Economic Advisor V Anantha Nageshwaran, is expected to say that the economy would grow at the slowest in four years at 6.4 per cent in the current financial year, according to PTI.

The slow economic growth is on account of weak manufacturing and investments.

The 6.4 per cent economic growth for FY 2024-25 is much lower than the 6.5-7 per cent growth that the Economic Survey had projected last year. It is even lower than the 6.6 per cent growth projected by the Reserve Bank of India (RBI), which was itself a downward revision from the previous projection of 7.2 per cent.

Even though the current year’s figures are bleak and projections for the upcoming year are not encouraging, CEA Nageshwaran in an article for The Mint said that economic growth will recover in the second half of the upcoming financial year.

In addition to the slowing economy, another area of concern flagged by Nageshwaran is India’s dependence on a single source for critical minerals. Even though he did not name any country, it was an apparent indication at China which supplies a large chunk of critical minerals and tech components.

While Nageshwaran hailed the reduction of fossil fuel’s usage and diversification of oil imports, he flagged the “dependence on imports from a single source for critical components, materials and minerals for renewable energy generation and e-mobility”.

Quick Reads

View All

India’s green leap: Electrifies faster than China did — and burns fewer fossil fuels per capita

India’s exports to China grows 37% in first 9 months of 2025-26 as ties warm up

Nageshwaran also flagged declining private capital expenditure and said that “social stability and long-term profitability rest on the private sector finding the right balance between capital deployment and labour employment”. Noting that the Economic Survey delves into the obligations of the private sector, he gave the example of Japan that he said transformed into a developed and industrialised nation because of a “clear recognition of the obligations of the government, the private sector and workers to each other”.