Economic Survey 2025 Live: What last year’s Economic Survey said
“India’s calibrated response to the pandemic on the economic front included three salient components. The first has been the focus on public spending on infrastructure, which kept the economy afloat by creating a strong demand for jobs and industrial output and triggered a lagged yet vigorous private investment response. Stronger balance sheets of the financial and non-financial private sector helped, aided by a decade of supporting initiatives by the Government and the Reserve Bank of India. The second has been partly a natural response of business enterprise and public administration amidst adversities, i.e., digitalisation of service delivery.
The public policy focus and nurturing of processes and frameworks in digital technology greatly helped this irreversible and transformational change. The third has been embodied in the Atmanirbhar Bharat Abhiyan in terms of targeted relief to different sectors of the economy and sections of the population, and structural reforms that assisted a firm recovery and increased the medium-term growth potential. Global troubles, supply chain disruptions, and vagaries of monsoons intermittently stoked domestic inflationary pressures, which were, to a great extent, managed by administrative and monetary policy responses. The fiscal balances of the general government—central and State Governments taken together – have improved progressively despite expansionary public investment. Tax compliance gains driven by procedural reforms, expenditure restraint, and increasing digitisation helped India achieve this fine balance.
The external balance has been pressured by subdued global demand for goods, but strong services exports largely counterbalanced this. Global output is now somewhat more resilient than in 2022, inflationary pressures are shrinking, and trade is set to recover, should there be no further geo-political shocks or flare-ups. However, the chances of geopolitical disturbances and conflicts have only gone up in recent times.
The net impact of these developments has been that the Indian economy recovered and expanded in an orderly fashion in the last three years. The real GDP in FY24 was 20 per cent higher than its level in FY20, a feat that only a very few major economies achieved, while also leaving a strong possibility for robust growth in FY25 and beyond. Growth has been inclusive with a reduction in unemployment and multi-dimensional poverty and an increase in labour force participation. Overall, the Indian economy looks forward to FY25 optimistically, anticipating broad-based and inclusive growth,” said last year’s survey.