India's GDP shows sluggish growth at 4.4% in October-December

India's gross domestic product (GDP) growth rate fell for the second consecutive quarter in October-December, coming in at 4.4 percent, data released on February 28 by the Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation showed.

At 4.4 percent, the latest quarterly growth number is lower than the 6.3 percent growth that was witnessed in the second quarter of 2022-23, which itself was less than half the 13.2 percent increase posted in April-June 2022 as the GDP growth rate benefitted from a low base in the early part of the year.

In December, the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) had forecast a growth rate of 4.4 percent for the last quarter of 2022.

However, at the time, the central bank had projected this year's growth rate at 6.8 percent. But as per the statistics ministry's first advance estimate of GDP, released in early January, India's GDP was set to grow by 7 percent in 2022-23.

The second advance estimate released by the government on February 28 has retained India's full-year GDP growth estimate of 7 percent for this year.

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The gross value added (GVA) growth for the third quarter came in at 4.6 percent during the third quarter, as against 5.5 percent in the July-September period.

The consumption growth for the the October-December period came in 2.1 percent, which is lower than 8.8 percent in the July-September.

The capital formation growth also slipped to 8.3 percent in the third quarter, as against 9.7 percent in the second quarter of the current fiscal.

The country's real GDP growth for FY23 is pegged at 7 percent, as the per the second advance estimate. This estimate is the same as shared in the first advance estimate.

The nominal GDP growth is pegged at 15.9 percent in the second advance estimate, which is up from 15.4 percent in the first advance estimate.

The government has also revised down the GDP growth for the April-June quarter quarter, from 13.5 percent to 13.2 percent.