IMF Executive Director Krishnamurthy V Subramanian on Tuesday slammed Kerala Congress over its post questioning the credibility of India’s GDP numbers, calling their reliance on a six-year-old study “intellectual bankruptcy".
“Correction: The paper by Arvind Subramanian on India’s GDP NEVER got published bcos of gaping holes in its analysis – it remains a ‘Working paper’ that NEVER passed the rigours of peer review,” Subramanian, who also served as Chief Economic Adviser from 2018 to 2021, wrote on X.
“Such sloppy economic analysis can move political parties wanting to grind their axe but not economists. The 2019-20 Economic Survey has already highlighted the dubious nature of the findings in Arvind Subramanian’s paper. That Kerala Congress has to resort to a 6-year-old discredited paper today clearly reveals the intellectual bankruptcy! Congress take note,” he added.
His response came after Kerala Congress alleged that the BJP was pushing "fake" GDP figures. “BJP has started a new propaganda that we've reached a $4.3 trillion GDP,” the party said. “Even they don't believe these numbers… We've been saying that there have been issues with the GDP formula since 2015.” The post then cited Arvind Subramanian’s working paper, which argued that GDP growth post-2011 could be overstated by roughly 2.5%.
According to the paper, if official data reported 7% growth, actual growth may have been closer to 4.5%. The party said it was attempting to “explain what is actually wrong, how wrong we are, and what the implications are.”
According to the International Monetary Fund, India is now the world’s fifth-largest economy and is set to surpass Japan by the third quarter of FY25. With GDP growth of 105% over the last decade — outpacing the US at 66% and China at 44% — India is on track to become the world’s third-largest economy by 2027, behind only the US and China. Japan and Germany, whose economies have seen little to no growth in recent years, are expected to be overtaken by India in the coming years.