India Macro Weekly: Real economy improves, FM supports multilateralism

 For the fortnight ended May 6, 2017:

• It was surprisingly quiet fortnight on the India data front, with only two major data points having been released: Sectoral deployment of credit and Core industry growth. Both indicators show relatively healthy trends.
• Credit growth stood at 7.4% in March 2017, still soft compared to the corresponding period of the previous year but improved from the previous months. A sharp spike in credit to the services sector buoyed growth, while personal loans’ growth continued to be strong as well.
• Core industries’ growth came in at its sharpest in 3 months of 5% in March 2017. Five of the 8 segments showed positive growth, while the remaining 3 showed a decline in output from the corresponding month of the previous year.
• At the Plenary Meeting of the Development Committee of the World Bank and the IMF, the Finance Minister, Arun Jaitley, called for a bigger and better bank. He touched upon the need for increased commitments from the group, a more representative share of developing countries in the group and India’s need for support on turning the demographic advantage into a true dividend.
• The latest numbers for the Orbis Economics Exchange Rate Index showed that despite some neutralisation in base to 2016-17 in the new financial year (2017-18), the GBP still remains the most depreciated major currency against the INR.

Know more about subscription to the full report - India Macro Weekly – by writing into manika.premsingh@orbiseconomics.com