Indian economy slowing down, says OECD

The latest assessment for India comes at a time when the economy is grappling with high inflation and fiscal deficit. The projections are based on OECD's Composite Leading Indicators (CLIs) - that are designed to indicate turning points in an economy.

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Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), a grouping of mostly developed nations, said that in India growth is "slowing down".

In January, India's CLI stood at 97.2 marginally lower than 97.3 recorded in December last year. The country's CLI has been on the decline since September 2012 when it touched 98.

"In China, India and to a lesser degree in Brazil the CLIs point to growth below trend. In Russia however, the CLI points to growth picking up," OECD said in a statement. Indian economic growth slipped to 4.5 percent in the three months ended December 2012, the lowest for any quarter in a decade.

The GDP had grown by 6 percent in the October-December period of last fiscal. The economic growth in the nine months ended December 2012 stood at 5.1 percent, lower than 6.6 percent seen in the year-ago period.

Fiscal deficit for the current financial year (2012-13) is projected to be 5.2 percent of GDP. However, OECD's readings for developed nations such as the US and Japan are positive.

"In the US and Japan, the CLIs continue to point to economic growth firming. In the Euro Area as a whole, and in particular Germany, the CLIs point to a pick-up in growth," it noted.