The current elevated level of international crude price, should it persist for a long time, may come in the way of India achieving a real economic growth rate of 8%-plus in FY23 and pose upside risks to inflation as well, the finance ministry said on Thursday.
The latest Economic Survey, presented before the Ukraine crisis, had pegged real growth for FY23 at 8-8.5%. More recently, some analysts have trimmed their FY23 growth projections to 7-8.5%. Retail inflation, meanwhile, scaled an eight-month peak of 6.07% in February, having hit the upper band of the Reserve Bank of India’s (RBI’s) medium-term target of 2-6% for a second straight month. This is expected to have risen further in March due to the hike in domestic fuel prices.
