India GDP to slow less than estimated as cash returns to economy

Bloomberg

India’s economy is forecast to slow less than estimated as banks work to replace cash sucked out by Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s shock clampdown in November.
Gross domestic product will probably grow 7.1 percent in the year through March after a 7.9 percent expansion the previous year, the Statistics Ministry said in a statement in New Delhi. While that’s the slowest pace since 2014, it’s faster than the 6.8 percent median estimate in a Bloomberg survey of 32 economists. GDP expanded 7 percent in October-December, compared with 6.1 percent in the survey and the previous quarter’s revised 7.4 percent.
The surprising resilience in growth masks job and revenue losses at small companies, which employ as much as 40 percent of the country’s workers and are the secret to India’s growth, according to some economists and lobby groups. Any slowdown therefore carries risks for policy makers, who lack space for fiscal stimulus and who this month signaled an end to monetary easing. The central bank said it expects a sharp rebound in growth after a slump.
“We have only advance filings by corporates. These have been incorporated in the estimates,” TCA Anant, the government’s chief statistician, told reporters after the data was published. “Full corporate filing data will not be available until the close of the financial year. Full data will be available only by January next year.”