Slump in economic growth and unemployment 2 major challenges: Congress

New Delhi: The Congress on Friday said the slump in economic growth and unemployment are two important challenges before the country and expressed the hope that the new government would address these issues.

"Slump in 'economic growth' & Runaway 'unemployment' are two important challenges before the country. Hope PM & FM will address them by laying a short-medium-long term roadmap of kick starting the growth engine as also employment generating strategy," he tweeted after CSO reported that the economic growth rate for the financial year 2018-19 stood at a five-year low of 6.8 per cent.

Real GDP or GDP at constant (2011-12) prices is now estimated at Rs 140.78 lakh crore. The GDP growth estimate during FY 19 was revised to 7 per cent as compared to 7.2 per cent in 2017-18.

During January to March quarter, the growth slipped to a low of 5.8 per cent, mainly due to a slowdown seen in key sectors like agriculture, industry, and manufacturing in the past nine months. The number was below the forecast of 6.5 per cent for the March quarter.

The country's fiscal deficit in 2018-19 stood at 3.4 per cent of GDP, roughly in line with the Interim Budget estimate. Spending during the financial year was Rs 23.1 lakh crore against the revised target of Rs 24.1 lakh crore.

Meanwhile, the rate of growth in eight core infrastructure industries during April came to 2.6 per cent against 4.9 per cent in the previous month. The combined index stood at 127.5 in April 2019 with cumulative growth during April to March 2018-19 at 4.3 per cent.

The slowdown reached a high point with the country's industrial output touching a 21-month low in March. Factory output as measured in terms of the Index of Industrial Production (IIP) had grown by 5.3 per cent in March 2018, according to the CSO data.

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