100 indicators of growth: Heady to steady

After a period of heady stock market gains a duot alongside impressive gross domestic product (GDP) growth clips, things seem to have cooled off a bit.

- PRANJUL BHAN DARI

A barrage of recent data releases gives mixed messages - some positive, some negative, a few improving, others worsening. Meanwhile, the king of all data, GDP growth, comes with its own complexities, with questions around the correct price deflator and volatility in government subsidies. All of this makes it hard to get a clear read on the state of the economy's growth. We try to address this problem by casting our net wide to cover all areas where reliable, quick and monthly data are available. We bring together 100 indicators of growth, and map them to various sectors, both on the production side (agriculture, industry and services), and the expenditure side (consumption, investment and exports). We are careful to use the quarterly momentum in each indicator to glean out recent trends. Using the widest variety of data available should give a more thorough picture of growth trends. We weight each sector according to its share of GDP to get an estimate of what proportion of the economy B fter a period of heady stock market gains ARI across both the current and capex accounts. It is likely that state capex will improve further, led by the government distributing another round of funds and interest-free capex loans from the Centre to the states. The rise in public capex is boosting investment growth, where we find that 60 per cent of the indicators are doing better now, compared to 40 per cent a quarter ago.