India's finance minister, Arun Jaitley, says his country is going to surpass China's economic growth.
In an interview with the Financial Times, he said the world's largest democracy (and currently the strongest BRIC) has much to gain from the economic reforms his government will undertake in the next few years.
"I think we can do even better," than China, Jaitley told the FT, but added that that milestone wouldn't give him much satisfaction, because China's economy is still bigger than India's.
Take a look:
China's GDP was $9.24 trillion in 2013, while India's was $1.87 trillion.
In his 2015 budget, Jaitley forecast that India's economy would grow at 8%-8.5% this fiscal year, versus 5.4% the prior year. (China's growth was 7.4% in 2014.)
That sounds really nice, but there is a big "but" here:
In light of that, Capital Economics' Shilan Shah wrote in a recent note that, for now, it's more useful to focus on other indicators of economic activity rather than on GDP growth - indicators like weak inflation and industrial production numbers.
CPI inflation growth came in at 5.17 percent year on year last month versus expectations of 5.41 percent, while WPI inflation contracted 2.33 percent, more than the expected 2.1 percent.
Lombard Street Research's Shweta Singh says India "needs to increase its faltering investment in productive areas" in order to reach higher growth rates.
"There is a still a long way to go," says Shah, before India matches China's growth rate - or its importance to the global economy.
