India overtakes France as 6th biggest economy in the world

The latest World Bank figures have some good news for India. A World Bank report says that Indian economy has now become world’s sixth-biggest pushing France to seventh place. The US leads the table as the biggest economy followed by China, Japan, Germany and Britain. The new calculations were arrived on the basis of Indian economy’s performance in 2017.

India’s gross domestic product (GDP) was valued at USD 2.597 trillion at the end of 2017 overtaking French economy, which was amounted at USD 2.582 trillion last year.

However, in terms of per capita GDP, India still lags far behind France, which is nearly 20 times bigger in comparison. This is because of the huge size of India’s population, which is estimated to be around 134 crore against only 6.7 crore of France.

According to the World Bank, Indian economy has benefitted from robust performances in manufacturing sector driven by increased consumer spending. The World Bank also noted that demonetisation in November 2016 and chaotic implementation of GST (goods and services tax) rollout in July last year were to be blamed for extended slowdown of Indian economy.

Overall, India has made rapid progress in economy doubling its GDP in less than past 10 years and emerged as the engine of economic growth in Asia at a time when Chinese economy has shown definite signs of lethargy.

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) has predicted India to grow at 7.4 per cent in 2018 and 7.8 per cent in 2019. The IMF, on the other hand, predicted that world’s economy would grow at 3.9 per cent over the next year.

Source: INDIA TODAY