Statistics are considered essential for us to understand the direction that we are going in. But some events cause such an upheaval in the real world that statistics would cease to foretell anything about the future and would merely help us in understanding how we fared in that particular period.
The outbreak of coronavirus pandemic is such a disruptive event. One needs to look at the economic data released by the Central government for the financial year 2019-2020 from this perspective.
Data shows FY 2019-20 was one of the bad years for India as the growth of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) declined to 4.2 per cent from 6.1 per cent in 2018-19 the slowest growth recorded since the 2008 Global Recession.
The per capita income during 2019-20 has grown by 3.1 per cent one of the lowest in the recent times. With inflation remaining above four per cent throughout the fiscal, the 3.1 per cent growth in per capita income indicates that people’s incomes have contracted and have become poorer.
The manufacturing sector was worst affected in the last fiscal as it has almost halted to record a growth of 0.03 per cent in FY 2019-20 from 5.7 per cent expansion in the previous year. The growth of the construction sector too declined to 1.3 per cent.
Bank credit growth considered important for boosting consumption has more than halved to 6.1 per cent compared to previous fiscal’s 13.3 per cent.
Surprisingly, the growth of deposits in banks too declined to 7.9 per cent in FY 2019-20 compared to 10 per cent in previous fiscal hinting at lower savings of people.
Though the government hinted at the revision of economic numbers later as the data flow from the economic entities has been impacted due to Covid-19 pandemic, there is the least hope that anything would change dramatically.
