India on Friday reported economic growth of 4.7 percent for the past fiscal year, falling short of the government’s forecast and continuing a trend of sluggish expansion that helped sweep a new government to power this month.
The numbers also showed growth of 4.6 percent for the January-March quarter. The growth rate for the year that ended March 31 was the second year of sub-5 percent expansion for Asia’s third-largest economy.
The Indian government had projected 2013 to 2014 growth of 4.9 percent. The government estimates the economy needs to expand at least 8 percent annually to provide jobs for the millions of young people entering the workforce.
The Bharatiya Janata Party won elections last month, installing Narendra Modi as prime minister, but it may be another year before any reforms the government pushes take effect, according to Madhavi Arora, an analyst with Kotak Mahindra Bank in Mumbai.
“We are not expecting a huge uptick in the GDP in the next year,” Arora said.
Complicating matters will likely be a monsoon season that is forecast to be lower than normal, dragging down the agriculture sector, she added.
Agriculture expansion was one of the few bright spots in the quarterly numbers, increasing by 6.3 percent. The lackluster manufacturing sector contracted by 1.4 percent.
Just a few years ago, India was touted as a rising economic power that could even outdo China, posting GDP growth of 8 to 9 percent annually for a decade.
However, both growth and enthusiasm began to fade starting in 2012 as shortages of electricity for industry discouraged investment and the decrepit state of roads and ports hampered trade in goods. A tangled bureaucracy to approve new projects and delays in economic reforms added to the disillusion, while high inflation and weak Indian consumer spending have also hurt the economy.
While India’s has managed to bring down its worrisome fiscal and trade deficits in the past year, it has been unable to spur growth. The country’s high inflation makes it difficult for the Indian central bank to lower interest rates to encourage spending by businesses.
Modi’s new government has promised to create jobs by attracting manufacturing investment and kick-starting stalled infrastructure projects, but Arora said the process would be slow and there is only so much the central government can do, since many of the land acquisition and environmental issues are handled by state governments and not New Delhi.
“Even if the government is able to fast-track projects, they could still get stuck at the state level,” Arora said.
Among the rows of vibrators, rubber torsos and leather harnesses at a Chinese sex toys exhibition in Shanghai this weekend, the beginnings of an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven shift in the industry quietly pulsed. China manufactures about 70 percent of the world’s sex toys, most of it the “hardware” on display at the fair — whether that be technicolor tentacled dildos or hyper-realistic personalized silicone dolls. Yet smart toys have been rising in popularity for some time. Many major European and US brands already offer tech-enhanced products that can enable long-distance love, monitor well-being and even bring people one step closer to
Malaysia’s leader yesterday announced plans to build a massive semiconductor design park, aiming to boost the Southeast Asian nation’s role in the global chip industry. A prominent player in the semiconductor industry for decades, Malaysia accounts for an estimated 13 percent of global back-end manufacturing, according to German tech giant Bosch. Now it wants to go beyond production and emerge as a chip design powerhouse too, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said. “I am pleased to announce the largest IC (integrated circuit) Design Park in Southeast Asia, that will house world-class anchor tenants and collaborate with global companies such as Arm [Holdings PLC],”
TRANSFORMATION: Taiwan is now home to the largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, thanks to the nation’s economic policies President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) yesterday attended an event marking the opening of Google’s second hardware research and development (R&D) office in Taiwan, which was held at New Taipei City’s Banciao District (板橋). This signals Taiwan’s transformation into the world’s largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, validating the nation’s economic policy in the past eight years, she said. The “five plus two” innovative industries policy, “six core strategic industries” initiative and infrastructure projects have grown the national industry and established resilient supply chains that withstood the COVID-19 pandemic, Tsai said. Taiwan has improved investment conditions of the domestic economy
Sales in the retail, and food and beverage sectors last month continued to rise, increasing 0.7 percent and 13.6 percent respectively from a year earlier, setting record highs for the month of March, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said yesterday. Sales in the wholesale sector also grew last month by 4.6 annually, mainly due to the business opportunities for emerging applications related to artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing technologies, the ministry said in a report. The ministry forecast that retail, and food and beverage sales this month would retain their growth momentum as the former would benefit from Tomb Sweeping Day