Arun Jaitley on GDP growth: Impact of demonetisation, GST behind us

Finance Minister Arun Jaitley on Thursday said the rise in GDP growth rate to 6.3 per cent in the July-September period of 2017-18 signals a reversal of downtrend witnessed over the preceding five quarters.

The minister further said the impact of two significant reforms demonetisation and rollout of the Goods and Services Tax (GST), is “behind us”, and the country can now look forward to upward growth trajectory in the coming quarters.

“The deceleration in overall growth witnessed since the first quarter of the last fiscal has been reversed,” he told reporters after the Central Statistics Office (CSO) released the GDP data.

Demonetisation and GST's impact is behind us and hopefully in coming quarters, we can look for an upwards trajectory: FM Arun Jaitley in Delhi pic.twitter.com/8rnxtCFBIg

— ANI (@ANI) November 30, 2017

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Jaitley said the economy now seems to have weathered the transitional challenges experienced earlier in the year and “appears poised for a durable recovery going forward”.

Reversing five quarters of slowing GDP growth, the Indian economy expanded by 6.3 per cent in July-September on the back of a pick-up in manufacturing.

The gross domestic product (GDP) growth had hit a three-year low of 5.7 per cent in the first quarter of 2017-18. It was 7.5 per cent in the September quarter of 2016-17.

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