Q3 GDP results: Indian economy grew at 6.2% in Oct-Dec 2024, up from 5.6% in previous quarter

India's economic growth decelerated to 6.2% in the October-December quarter (Q3) of the 2024-25 fiscal year, according to the government data released on Friday, mainly due to poor performance by the manufacturing and mining sectors.

The growth rate matches the lower range of the 6.2%-6.3% forecast by SBI Research, which had cited positive momentum across high-frequency indicators.

The growth had slowed to 5.6% in the July-September quarter of 2024, a slight upward revision from the earlier estimate of 5.4%, but still lower than the 8.1% expansion recorded in the same period a year earlier.

India’s economy is projected to grow 6.5% in the fiscal year 2024-25, according to the second advance estimates released by the National Statistics Office (NSO) on Wednesday. The forecast marks a slowdown from the 9.2% expansion recorded in the previous fiscal year, which was the highest in 12 years excluding the post-pandemic rebound of 2021-22.

The NSO’s revised estimates showed that real GDP grew by 9.2% in FY 2023-24, the highest in 12 years except for the post-pandemic recovery in 2021-22. This growth was driven by strong performances in the manufacturing (12.3%), construction (10.4%), and financial services (10.3%) sectors.

India remains one of the world’s fastest-growing major economies, with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) projecting GDP growth at 6.5% for both FY25 and FY26.

The World Bank, in a report, said that India will need to grow at an average annual rate 7.8% over the next 22 years to transition into a high-income economy by 2047.

“For India to become a high-income economy by 2047, its GNI (gross national income) per capita would have to increase by nearly 8 times over the current levels; growth would have to accelerate further and to remain high over the next two decades, a feat that few countries have achieved,” the report said.