Economists warn of global slowdown, likely to impact India’s GDP growth

Former Secretary, Government of India Subhash Chandra Garg spoke about the importance of investing in India's digital infrastructure and services industry for the country's future growth during a seminar on Growth Prospects of the Indian Economy 2023-24.

He emphasized three areas that have significant growth opportunities - physical infrastructure, digital infrastructure, and the services industry. While investment is still required in physical infrastructure, the bigger opportunity lies in digital infrastructure, such as data centres and telecom.

Dharamakirti Joshi, Chief Economist of CRISIL, shared insights into the global economy, highlighting that the high level of indebtedness and uncontrolled inflation is expected to result in a slowdown of the global economy.

India is also likely to experience a slowdown in GDP growth from 7% to 6% in 2022-2023 due to the net negative impact of the slowdown in the US and Europe, which offsets the increase in Chinese growth.

However, India's projected growth rate of 6-7% for FY 2024 would position it as the best among other emerging market countries due to the government's continued focus on infrastructure spending.

The MSMEs sector is crucial to India's growth and is expected to be worth INR 1 trillion by 2028, with 63.4 million MSMEs contributing significantly.