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Fitch Ratings on Friday, 22 March, cut India's GDP growth forecast for the next fiscal to 6.8 percent from 7 percent estimated earlier on weaker-than-expected economic momentum.
In its latest Global Economic Outlook, Fitch also slashed GDP growth forecast for the current fiscal ending March 2019 to 6.9 percent from 7.2 percent projected in the December edition.
The Indian economy grew 7.2 percent in 2017-18 fiscal.
"While we have cut our growth forecasts for the next fiscal year (FY20, ending March 2020) on weaker than expected momentum, we still see Indian GDP growth to hold up reasonably well at 6.8 per cent followed by 7.1 percent in FY21," Fitch said.
"The slowdown has been driven by cooling activity growth in the manufacturing sector and, to a lesser extent, agriculture. Weaker momentum has been mainly domestically driven," Fitch said.
It said, credit availability has tightened up in areas heavily dependent on non-bank financial companies (NBFCs), such as autos and two-wheelers, where sales have dropped.
Also, food inflation has been muted and fell into negative territory late last year, weighing on farmers' incomes.
It said, fiscal and monetary policies are becoming more growth friendly and RBI adopted a dovish stance and cut interest rates by 0.25 per cent last month.
Fitch also cut its global GDP forecasts for 2018 and 2019 at 3.2 per cent in 2018 and 2.8 percent in 2019 from 3.3 per cent and 3.1 percent respectively projected earlier.
It, however, retained China's growth projections at 6.6 percent in 2018 and 6.1 percent in 2019.
It estimates oil prices to remain around 65 dollar to a barrel in 2019 and fall to USD 62.5 to a barrel in 2020, from USD 71.6 a barrel in 2018.
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