Handsome recovery in Indian economy

New Delhi: The Indian economy has recovered 'handsomely' from the pandemic-induced disruptions, former NITI Aayog Vice-Chairman Arvind Panagariya said on Tuesday, while expressing hope that the recovery will be sustained and the growth rate of 7 to 8 per cent will be restored.

Panagariya suggested that the government must now signal its intention to wind down fiscal deficit by cutting it by half-to-one percentage point in 2022-23. "The Indian economy has recovered handsomely, returning to its pre-COVID GDP... Only private consumption is still below its pre-COVID-19 level," the eminent economist told PTI in an interview. While an advanced estimate by the Ministry of Statistics &Programme Implementation (MoSPI) places India's GDP growth in 2021-22, at 9.2 per cent, Panagariya said this is higher than any other country this past year and the recovery has also been across-the-board.

The economy, which was significantly hit by the pandemic, had contracted 7.3 per cent in the last fiscal. Panagariya noted that the dominant view among epidemiologists now is that with a large proportion of the population now having antibodies due to past infections from different variants of the virus or vaccination, there is now a high chance that the epidemic is about to enter the endemic phase.