The Indian GDP grew by 6.6%, the slowest in five quarters. In fact, even a growth of 6.6% seems to be on the optimistic side, given that this is not in line with the underlying economic fundamentals, which can be measured through high-frequency economic indicators like car sales, two-wheeler sales, tourist arrivals, railway freight movement, etc.
Let’s try and get some sense of what the economic indicators looked like in the three month period between October to December 2018.
In this piece, the yearly growth of 15 high frequency economic indicators has been looked at. These indicators include (and as can be seen from the accompanying table, which is in two parts) indicators like car sales, two-wheeler sales, commercial vehicle sales, non-oil exports, non-oil non-gold non-silver imports, revenue earning rail freight, among others.
The performance of 11 out of the 15 economic indicators was much better during the period October to December 2017 than it was in October to December 2018. This basically means that the yearly growth of most economic indicators was better during the same period.
In simple English, what this means is that the
These indicators are real time economic indicators and not a theoretical construct like the GDP number. Also, in a scenario where India grew by 8.2% during 2016-2017, the year of demonetisation, it makes more sense to trust real time economic indicators more than the GDP number declared by the government.
Let’s take a closer look at some of these indicators. Take car sales, the most cited indicator among these indicators. During the period October to December 2018, car sales fell by 0.79% in comparison to October to December 2017. In fact, car sales had fallen by 2.42% during July to September 2018.