Live Breaking News & Updates on Tenuous revival creating jobs

Creating jobs and boosting incomes, along with vaccination, can sustain the economy
The national income estimates released by the NSO posit an economy that appears to have found some footing in the January-March quarter before the pandemic’s second wave hit. GDP expanded by 1.6% in the final quarter of the last fiscal, an acceleration from the 0.5% growth in the preceding three-month period, that marginally softened the extent of the full-year’s record contraction to 7.3%. The Centre had earlier projected full-year GDP to contract by 8%. There was a 3.7% growth in fourth-quarter gross value added, with all but two of the economy’s eight broad sectors posting expansions. Mining and quarrying and the worst-hit contact-intensive omnibus services category of trade, hotels, transport, communications and broadcasting contracted 5.7% and 2.3%, respectively. Still, the pandemic’s crushing impact over the preceding three quarters meant that only the agriculture, forestry and fishing and the utility services recorded full-year growth. On the expenditure side, private consumption spending appeared to have rebounded to growth for the first time in four quarters, posting an expansion of 2.7% that moderated the full-year’s contraction to 9.1%. And gross fixed capital formation, a proxy for private investment, jumped 11% in the three-month period, most likely helped in fair measure by an increase in capital spending by the Government.

Refinitiv-ipsos-primary-consumer-sentiment-index , Editorial , Tenuous-revival-creating-jobs , Boosting-incomes , Vaccination , Sustaining-the-economy , National-income-estimates , Pandemics-second-wave , Growth-acceleration , Record-contraction , The-centre