The last two years have been thunderous for the world. After going through a swing of unfortunate incidents, we ended 2022 with optimism and enthusiasm. While the pandemic still exists, the Ukraine-Russia war seems to have no end. On top of it, the dark cloud of the global recession in the years to come continues to haunt everyone, and we have learnt to survive with it.
The Indian economy saw a fair share of ups and downs in the calendar year 2022 as per entrepreneur Karan Asrani. He is the owner of Krishna Group of Industries in Mumbai. Being in the automobile industry, Asrani has often shared his views about the sales of vehicles, newer market trends and his analysis of the Indian market.
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As we have entered 2023, the businessman opens up on the graph of the Indian economy in the current year and the year going forward. According to the first official estimate released by the Statistics Ministry recently, India's gross domestic product (GDP) growth is projected to slip to 7 per cent in the current fiscal ending March 2023 owing to weak demand.
More so, India witnessed a GDP growth of 8.7 per cent in 2021-22. And if the forecast by National Statistical Office (NSO) is true, the country's GDP will be lower than Saudi Arabia's expected GDP growth of 7.6 per cent. Karan says, "RBI projected GDP of 6.8 per cent and the government had a forecast of 8 to 8.5 per cent GDP growth. I am hopeful that in FY23, the agriculture sector, services sector and the electric sector will have a decent growth to boost the country's GDP."
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Moving to the interest rate hikes, the Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) of the RBI left the rate unchanged at 4% back in April 2022. The MPC has raised the rates at each of its three subsequent meetings this year, thereby hiking the repo rate by 50 basis points each time till the rate peaked at 5.9% in September 2022. It was only in December 2022 that the RBI decided to moderate its rate hikes and raise the repo rate by 35 basis points to 6.25%
Speaking about the Indian stock market, Karan Asrani revealed, "The stock market was very volatile in 2022. At the onset of the year, investors' sentiments got a boost from the return of FII investors. Renewed foreign institutional buying moved both the benchmark indices to new heights."
With Sensex crashing several times in 2022, pharma and IT companies which were saviours in the covid era also failed to create wonders. While 2023 looks challenging, Karan Asrani is hopeful that the G20 Summit being held in India will bring many foreign investment opportunities to the country.
