India to be fastest growing economy, to grow at 9.5% in 2021: IMF projections

India’s economy is projected to be the fastest growing economy in the world in 2022, according to latest projections released by the International Monetary Fund on Tuesday. IMF said India will grow by 9.5% in 2021 and 8.5% in the next year.

India’s growth projection released by the latest World Economic Outlook remains unchanged from its previous WEO (World Economic Outlook) update of July this summer but is a three-percentage point in 2021 and 1.6 percentage point drop from its April projections.

According to the latest WEO update, released ahead of the annual meeting of the IMF and the World Bank, the world is expected to grow at 5.9% in 2021 and 4.9% in 2022.

The United States is projected to grow at 6% this year and 5.2% next year.

China to grow 8%

China, on the other hand, is projected to grow at 8% in 2021 and 5.6% in 2022.

Gita Gopinath, Chief Economist of the IMF, said that compared to their July forecast, the global growth projection for 2021 has been revised down marginally to 5.9% and is unchanged for 2022 at 4.9%. However, this modest headline revision masks large downgrades for some countries.

“The outlook for the low-income developing country group has darkened considerably due to worsening pandemic dynamics. The downgrade also reflects more difficult near-term prospects for the advanced economy group, in part due to supply disruptions,” she said.

She said the principal common factor behind these complex challenges is the continued grip of the pandemic on global society. Gopinath said that the foremost policy priority is therefore to vaccinate at least 40% of the population in every country by end-2021 and 70% by mid-2022.