



The week in charts: GDP projections, core industry slowdown, India-UAE energy partnership
Subscribe to enjoy similar stories. From the International Monetary Fund (IMF) raising India’s FY26 GDP growth projection to 7.3%, to weak core-sector output compared with pre-covid levels, India’s new deal with the United Arab Emirates (UAE), rising US–EU tensions over Greenland, and the push for small-ticket UPI loans amid rising household debt, here's this week’s news in numbers. The IMF has lifted its projection for India’s GDP growth in FY26 to 7.3% from its October estimate of 6.6%.
It attributed the upward revision to better-than-expected performance in the September quarter and strong momentum in the ongoing quarter. The Reserve Bank of India and the World Bank had similarly revised their forecasts in their most recent iterations. However, the IMF, World Bank and other major institutions expect GDP growth to slow down next year.
The IMF projects growth of 6.4% in both FY27 and FY28, while the World Bank expects it to slow to 6.5% in FY27, partly due to US tariffs on Indian imports and the waning of cyclical factors. India’s eight core industries have been growing at a subdued pace this fiscal year. In the first nine months of FY26, output grew by 2.6%.
In the past decade, only FY16, FY20 and FY21 saw slower growth. The data for December was released earlier this week. The slowdown in FY26 is broad-based: all sectors except cement and steel were weak.
Natural gas saw the sharpest contraction (3.2%), while crude oil and coal shrank 1.8% and 0.7%, respectively. Refinery products, fertilizers and electricity are the other constituents of the index. That said, December was slightly better.
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