Outlook 2024: Trend growth next five years is going to be well above 7%, says Neelkanth Mishra

economictimes.indiatimes.com:

Neelkanth Mishra, Chief Economist, Axis Bank & Head of Global Research, Axis Capital, says the turn in the capital injection cycle has become visible. Now we are seeing cement volume growth picking up. We are starting to see early signs of shortages in the power generation sector, which gives us some comfort that trend growth as we think about the next five years is going to be well above 7%. Those are the reasons why growth numbers will be upgraded.”

Your report talks about a positive surprise as far as India’s growth is concerned. In fact, it is not just you. RBI Governor too this time around raised the outlook on GDP growth and why not? The last reading on quarterly GDP was a big surprise. What are the elements of this outperformance on growth which you are talking about going forward?
There are three major points here. The first is that I think the capital injection slowdown or rather the slowdown in capital formation that happened pre-Covid has already brought down trend growth assumptions and that I think was a mistake. Most people thought this means that India's economy is no longer capable of growing even at 7% and that it should be more like 6-6.5%.

Unlock Leadership Excellence with a Range of CXO Courses

The second change that happened was that people thought that the Covid-related recession or rather the growth problems that India faced or the rest of the world faced, would lead to a further reduction and that the 6-6.5% trend growth would become even lower going forward.
The third was that the recovery in this