New Delhi: Morgan Stanley has lowered India’s GDP growth forecasts to 7.6 per cent for F2023 from 7.9 percent and to 6.7 per cent for F2024 (from 7 per cent) due to higher oil prices and slower global growth.
The foreign brokerage said slower global growth, adverse terms of trade shock, and impact on business confidence from geopolitical tensions weigh on the near-term outlook
Morgan Stanley’s global economics team expects global growth to average 2.9 per cent YoY in 2022 slowing from 6.2 percent growth in CY21. Against this backdrop, it has lowered forecasts of India’s GDP growth .
“Despite the cyclical headwinds, however, we see the economy expanding at above pre-pandemic growth rates in 2022 and 2023: We expect support from the government’s supply-side response and the reopening vibrancy to help counter the downside. We expect reopening vibrancy to help the informal sector, in turn supporting consumption growth, which has been a laggard. The government’s policy reforms, plus expansion of public infrastructure spending alongside an increase in capacity utilization levels, should help private capex recover in 6-9 months.” it said in a report.
Morgan Stanley expects macro stability indicators to worsen.
“Building on the impact of adverse terms of trade, we expect both inflation and the current account deficit to deteriorate. We expect broad-based price pressures, which will keep CPI inflation above the 6 per cent mark through October 2022, with average CPI expected to be 6.5 per cent for F2023. Similarly, reflecting the commodity price pressures, we expect the current account deficit to widen to a 10-year high of 3.3 per cent of GDP in F2023,” it said.
With inflation concerns rising, the RBI raised the repo rate 40bp, to 4.4 per cent, in an off-schedule meeting in May.
