New Delhi: India is now all set to beat the United Kingdom in 2019 to become the world’s fifth largest economy, according to a report by global consultancy firm PwC.
According to World Bank data on gross domestic product (GDP) of countries, India became the world’s sixth largest economy overtaking France in 2017.
However, IMF claims India’s slower growth led France to relegate the former to the seventh position in 2018.
“The UK was considered to be the world’s fifth largest economy by the IMF in 2018 in US dollar terms at market exchange rates. Based on both the IMF’s forecasts and our main scenario projections, it is likely to be surpassed by two others in 2019: India and possibly also France,” said PwC’s Global Economy Watch report.
It said that one of these changes may be permanent. “India is the fastest growing large economy in the world, with an enormous population, favourable demographics and high catch-up potential due to low initial GDP per head. India is therefore all but certain to continue to rise in the global GDP league table in the coming decades as projected in our latest World in 2050 report,” said the report.
However, it said that United Kingdom and France have regularly switched places over the past decade or two, owing to their similar levels of development and roughly equal populations.
France’s improvement in 2019 will depend on the continued relative strength of the euro against the UK’s pound, but much depends on how Brexit turns out, it said.
PwC’s Global Economy Watch report projects real GDP growth of 1.6 per cent for the UK, 1.7 per cent for France and 7.6 per cent for India in 2019.
Last week Union finance minister Arun Jaitley had said that when Prime minister Narendra Modi came to power, India was the tenth largest economy in GDP terms in the world.
“Presently, the fifth, sixth and seventh largest economies namely the United Kingdom, France and India are within a very narrow range,” the finance minister had said in a blog.
As per the IMF data, in 2018, India is the seventh largest economy with a GDP of $2.69 trillion, preceded by France at the sixth position with a GDP of $2.79 trillion.
The UK, which is facing Brexit blues, had the fifth largest GDP of $2.81 trillion, which is about $119 billion more than that of India, the data showed.
The US was the world’s largest economy with a size of $20.51 trillion, followed by China ($13.46 trillion) at the second place in 2017. Japan ($5.07 trillion) and Germany ($4.02 trillion) were at the third and fourth places, respectively.
