GDP may go up to 7 per cent: Ex-IMF economist

The Indian economy is expected to grow by 7 per cent in the current fiscal, slightly higher than 6.6 per cent projected by the IMF in October, said Gita Gopinath, former chief economist of the Washington-based International Monetary Fund.

Speaking at Times Network’s India Economic Conclave 2025, Gopinath said that the IMF made its projection for India’s growth before the National Statistical Office (NSO) came out with its July-September quarter growth rate of 8.2 per cent.

“I would say that the IMF number (India’s growth projection) was 6.6 per cent that came out in October. But their forecast for the second quarter of the current fiscal, in terms of what the growth would be, was much lower than what it turned out to be at over 8 per cent.

“Just doing math, I would expect that India’s GDP growth would go up close to 7 per cent,” she said.

Earlier this month, the Reserve Bank of India raised the GDP growth projection to 7.3 per cent for the current fiscal from its earlier estimate of 6.8 per cent, following robust economic performance in the July-September quarter.