Indian Economy

While there may have been some effect of the current global slowdown on economic activity in India, poor performance of agriculture has perhaps been more responsible for the Indian economic slowdown in recent years. Thus domestic factors such as agricultural growth can be neglected only at our own peril. With the information technology industry set to be a major vehicle for productivity growth, India must be prepared to withstand the increased possibility of output volatility through upswings and recessions. And as it increasingly meshes with the globalised trading and financial system, India's own financial system must be strengthened to withstand asset price shocks with policies geared to take quick remedial measures.

Wrong Prescriptions A correspondent writes: Even a 4 per cent rate of economic growth need not be scoffed at, though it does mean that the economy has underperformed in terms of the target of 6 per cent. It does speak however of the need not to set growth targets unrealistically high. Then the impression goes round that the economy is underperforming. Cynics may suggest that there is a deliberate attempt to show underperformance with a view to push forward the reform programme to which the government is committed.

This paper attempts to study the transmission mechanism of an increase in petroleum prices on the prices of other commodities and output in India. The paper also examines the nature and the extent of 'feedback' in such a transmission mechanism and obtains evidence of bidirectional causality between oil and non-oil inflation in India.

This paper has two broad objectives: First, identify a set of factors that appear to be responsible for a significant decline in India's export growth during the post-reform era, and second, an examination of the possible impediments for high export growth in a sustained manner. The decline in Indian exports during 1996-97 was due mainly to a fall in the growth rate of export volumes. This analysis brings out the nature of demand-side factors, as against supply-side bottlenecks, that have constricted the growth of exports. However, easing of supplyside constraints too would have aided the revival of export growth.