GDP Growth Forecast for the year 2013-14

Central Statistical Office of Government of India has issued on 31^st May, 2013 the quarterly estimates for the Indian Economy for three years 2010-11, 2011-12 and 2012-13 along with annual estimates for these years.  Just recently, CSO has issued Q1 estimate for the year 2013-14 as Rs. 1,371,446 crores at 2004-05 prices.  On the basis of these quarterly estimates, here an attempt has been made to predict constant prices GDP for the subsequent three quarters and hence the annual estimates for the said current year.  Annual estimate for the GDP (2012-13) is Rs. 5,505,437 Crores at 2004-05 prices as per the press note of 31^st May, 2013.

Let me have the said GDP quarterly data in the following table:

Year/Share	Q1	Q2	Q3	Q4	Annual GDP	Growth Rate
2010-11	1,160,611	1,165,264	1,275,140	1,335,989	4,937,004
Share	0.235084	0.236027	0.258282	0.270607
2011-12	1,247,496	1,241,106	1,351,252	1,403,727	5,243,581	6.2
Share	0.237909	0.236691	0.257696	0.267704
2012-13	1,314,255	1,305,531	1,414,869	1,470,782	5,505,437	5.0
Share	0.238719	0.237135	0.256995	0.267151
2013-14	1371446	1367860	1489493	1552098	5,780,897	5.0
Average Share	0.237238	0.236617	0.257658	0.268487

 One may note that the share of various quarters are very stable up to two decimal places.  The range for the shares of Q1, Q2, Q3 and Q4 over the given three years is 0.0036, 0.0011, 0.0013 and 0.0035 respectively up to four decimal places.  The value for Q1 is given and this has the largest variation out of the four.  If we have the average share for all these quarters over the last three years, the quarterly share to be observed in the current year may not be very far from what we would be observing.  Using these ratios and the estimate of Q1, one may work out the estimates of Q2 to Q4 as given in the above table and the annual estimate for the year 2013-14 as Rs. 5,780,897 crores.  The GDP (at 2004-05 prices) growth over the previous year thus work out to be 5%, which is incidentally the same as what we observed last year.  Thus the GDP growth in the next three quarters would be around 4.8%, 5.3% and 5.5% respectively over the previous year’s quarter GDPs.