India will overtake the UK to become the fifth largest in 2025 and race to the third spot by 2030
New Delhi: In news that is positive, India will overtake the UK to become the fifth largest in 2025 and race to the third spot by 2030, a think tank said on Saturday, as published by PTI.
It is to be noted that India had overtaken the UK in 2019 to become the fifth largest economy in the world but has been relegated to 6th spot in 2020.
"India has been knocked off course somewhat through the impact of the pandemic. As a result, after overtaking the UK in 2019, the UK overtakes India again in this year's forecasts and stays ahead till 2024 before India takes over again," the news agency quoted Centre for Economics and Business Research (CEBR) as saying in its annual report published on Saturday.
It is forecast that the Indian economy will expand by 9 per cent in 2021 and by 7 per cent in 2022.
"Growth will naturally slow as India becomes more economically developed, with the annual GDP growth expected to sink to 5.8 per cent in 2035."
"This growth trajectory will see India become the world's third largest economy by 2030, overtaking the UK in 2025, Germany in 2027 and Japan in 2030," it said.
The Covid-19 pandemic, the think tank said, has been a human and an economic catastrophe for India, with more than 140,000 deaths recorded as of the middle of December.
While this is the highest death toll outside of the US in absolute terms, it equates to around 10 deaths per 100,000, which is a significantly lower figure than has been seen in much of Europe and the Americas.
"GDP in Q2 (April-June) 2020 was 23.9 per cent below its 2019 level, indicating that nearly a quarter of the country's economic activity was wiped out by the drying up of global demand and the collapse of domestic demand that accompanied the series of strict national lockdowns," it said.
As the manufacturer of the majority of the world's vaccines and with a 42-year-old vaccination programme that targets 55 million people each year, India is better placed than many other developing countries to roll out the vaccines successfully and efficiently next year.
(With PTI inputs)
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