India’s economy posted the biggest contraction among major economies last quarter, with a recent surge in coronavirus infections weighing on the outlook for any recovery.
Gross domestic product shrank 23.9% in the three months to June from a year earlier, the Statistics Ministry said in a report Monday.
That’s the sharpest decline since the nation started publishing quarterly figures in 1996, and was worse than any of the world’s biggest economies tracked by Bloomberg. The median estimate in a survey of economists was for an 18% contraction.
India reported more than 78,000 new infections on Sunday, the most by any country, with total cases nearing 4 million in a nation of 1.3 billion. That could delay the consumption-driven economy from fully reopening.
Once the world’s fastest-growing major economy, India is now on track for its first full-year contraction in more than four decades. While there are early signs that activity began picking up this quarter as lockdown restrictions were eased, the recovery is uncertain as India is quickly becoming the global epicenter for virus infections.
Source: Bloomberge
