India’s economy is out of recession but still a long way from returning to rates of growth seen before the pandemic.
Asia’s third biggest economy recorded a rise in gross domestic product of 0.4% in the final three months of 2020, compared with the same period a year earlier, according to official statistics published on Friday.
Last year, the country plunged into recession for the first time in nearly a quarter of a century, with economists warning that it would struggle to recover from the slump. Official data showed that GDP fell 7.3% from last July to September, following a record drop of more than 24% the previous quarter.
For 2020 as a whole, the Indian economy contracted by 6.9%.
In a research note on Friday, Shilan Shah, senior economist at Capital Economics, estimated that GDP grew 9.2% in the last quarter of 2020 compared with the previous quarter, “enough to lift it back to the pre-pandemic peak.”
